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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ' 



Shelf ......"XS^'S" 



UNITED STATES OF AJISJ3ICA. 



USTZEW" BOOKS. 



Spring of 1882. 

PAUL D RE I FUSS: His Holiday Abroad. By 
John W. Allen, Jr. Cloth, i2mo. $1.00. 

The entertaining record of the observations and reflections of an old 
European traveller. 

GEMS OF THE ORIENT. Gathered and ar- 
ranged by Chas. D. B. Mills. i2mo, cloth, 
bevelled, full gilt. $1.50. 

A " Golden Treasury " of the wit and wisdom of the East. 

BIRD-BOLTS : Shots on the Wing. By Francis 
Tiffany. i8mo, cloth. 75 cts. 

A volume of short, crisp essays, bright, entertaining, and suggestive. 

WRESTLING AND WAITING. Sermons. By 
John F. W. Ware. Cloth, i2mo, with portrait. 

$[.50. 

BELIEFS ABOUT MAN. By M. J. Savage- 
i2mo, cloth. $1.00. 

A companion volume to Mr. Savage's Belief in God. 

THE GOSPEL OF LAW. A Series of Dis- 
courses on Fundamental Church Doctrines. By 
S.J.Stewart. i2mo, cloth. $1.25. 

GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 
141 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass. 



Bird-Bolts: 



SHOTS ON THE WING. 



FRANCIS TIFFANY. 



"To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition, is to take 
those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets." 

Twelfth Night, i., 5. 

I ii I 

97 

BOSTON: 

George H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 

1882. 






Copyright, 

1882', 

By GEORGE H. ELLIS 



TO 

EDWIN B. HASKELL, 

EDITOR, BOSTON HERALD. 

Fully aware that it is not regarded a judicious compli- 
hient to name a child after anybody till the little one 
shall have survived the first critical attacks that menace 
the precarious life of infancy, I nevertheless venture to fly 
in the face of custom to the extent of inscribing this dimin- 
utive bantling of a book to you who first kindly encour- 
aged me to contribute to the Sunday Herald a number 
of pieces that make part of its table of contents. 

In sincere friendship, 

FRANCIS TIFFANY. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Philosophy of the Kitten . . 5 

II. The Chinese Question 10 

III. The Educated Fleas 16 

IT. Routing Inertia 23 

V. How Early Impressions expand . . 28 

VI. Hints on Real Estate 34 

VII. Nil Admirari 38 

VIII. Our Lady of the Shears .... 43 

IX. Topsy-Turvy Notions of Causation 48 

X. Were our Ancestors Fools ? . . . 54 

XI. HOW TO KINDLE FlRES 61 

XII. Drei-Maenner Wein ...... 68 

XIII. Whipping the Gods ....... 74 

XIV. The New Gospel of Color .... 77 
XT. Owning and Being Owned .... 82 

XVI. "The Maxim of War" 87 

XVII. Perfume and Aroma 93 

XVIII. Long Strides and Short 97 

XIX. Vicious Virtues 102 



4 CONTENTS. 

XX. The Alarming Increase of Poo- 
dles 106 

XXI. The Mind behind the Eye . . . Ill 
XXII. Fathers after the Flesh and 

Fathers after the Spirit . . 118 

XXIII. Overcharging the Gun .... 123 

XXIV. The True School of Style ... 127 
XXV. Epistles of Commendation . . . 134 

XXVI. Making Something Beautiful . . 140 

XXVII. Thanksgiving Day 144 

XXVIII. One Guinea and Five Guinea 

Monkeys 151 

XXIX. Sounding Brass and Tinkling 

Cymbals 155 

XXX. Enlarging One's Horizon ... 160 

XXXI. Happy New Year 166 

XXXII. The Relation of Number One to 

Number Two 170 

XXXIII. The Ugliness of the Individual 175 



I. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 

A S the promoter of immediate, even though 
transitory, happiness in a family, few things 
can be named that are more effective than the 
simple introduction into it of a playful kitten. 
Even where morals and religion fail outright, 
this always proves triumphantly successful. 

Tea time is over, for example. The husband 
is sitting, tired with his day's work and silent, 
the wife equally wearied with hers, and the 
children begin to feel the situation decidedly 
oppressive. Presently, after a portentously, 
long-drawn sigh, six-year-old little Ellen is sud- 
denly struck with a bright idea, and vanishes 
out of the room. A moment later and she is 
heard on the return, dangling something after 
her. It turns out to be a string, with a spool 
at the end of it, in whose wake, crouching, 
springing, all grace, life, and elasticity, is pussy. 
Irresistibly does the dancing motion in the bob- 



6 BIRD-BOLTS. 

bing spool set on dancing motion in the nerves 
and consciousness of the kitten. Equally irre- 
sistibly do the quick p ulses of the glee and 
electric life in her propagate kindred vibrations 
through the frames of the now suddenly ani- 
mated family. The father begins to smile, the 
mother ripples all over, the children fairly dance 
with delight ; and, ten to one, before many 
minutes are by, the late tired and perhaps mo- 
rose lord of the mansion jumps up and insists 
on taking the string into his own hand and 
becoming an actor in the merry comedy. 

Behold how great a fire a little kitty kindleth! 
How profound and effective a philosopher this 
miniature Ellen ! If preachers and orators, with 
their larger range, understood the matter a tithe 
as well, the world in a trice would be peopled 
with patriots and saints. 

But this is precisely what the majority of 
the world's teachers never learn. They study 
the laws of stimulating life in books so dreary 
that they fairly fall asleep over them them- 
selves. What one of them that ever had wit 
enough to insist on little Ellen being inaug- 
urated professor of homiletics in a divinity 
school? And yet, right before their eyes has 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 7 

she illustrated a principle of simply illimitable 
bearing, alike on forensic oratory or pulpit 
eloquence. Here is her philosophical thesis: 
" Motion sets on motion ; electric life, electric 
life." First, the jump and dance in the spool, 
then the jump and dance in kitty, then the jump 
and dance in father and mother. One follows 
the other as inevitably as the breeze across 
the lake, then the responsive wavelets on the 
surface, then the vibrating grasses along the 
shore. 

Fishing and hunting constitute one of the 
few subjects on which grown-up people mani- 
fest any real grasp of philosophical principles. 
An incurable dullard must he be who thinks 
long to enliven himself with a logy chub or 
soggy catfish. No! with clear, rational intent, 
man betakes himself to the lively trout or leap- 
ing salmon, and then all along the electric line 
and vibrating fly-rod streams the magnetic life. 
Or, if a hunter, it is the flying fox and not the 
lumbering turtle he mounts his horse and spurs 
after. 

Now, the first beginnings even of intelligent 
conduct are to be recognized and praised. 
Trout, salmon, and foxes are but cunning sym- 



8 BIRD-BOLTS. 

bols in which Nature hides universal lessons. 
Like .zEsop, she talks animals, but means men. 
How to triumph over dulness, stupidity, dumps 
in the family, school, church, — this is what she 
is really emphasizing. And therefore does she 
constitute little Ellen her true professor, and 
say, " Except ye become as this little child, ye 
cannot enter into the kingdom." 

It cannot be denied that a great deal of the 
family life of the land is oppressively heavy 
and stupid. What evenings of silence, monot- 
ony and moroseness are labored through with, 
and that, too, by husbands, wives, sons, and 
daughters witli large capacities of happy life 
in them, could these capacities once be stirred! 
Alas ! the kitten is not brought in. But there 
she is all the while, sleeping in the strings of 
the silent piano or snuggled away in the book- 
case, say, as an Uncle Remus story. Bring her 
out in this latter shape, for instance, and read 
aloud " The Tar Baby." In a trice has the 
rollicking negro life imparted itself to the whole 
group, and the late sluggish pool is a rippling, 
laughing sheet of water. 

When will man learn to prize and utilize the 
endless range of like stimulants he has around 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 9 

him, as practically as the toper the variously 
labelled decanters on the shelves of the bar- 
room? There is no getting along' without a 
nipper of some sort, now and then, to cheer a 
body up. The piano will do it, the fiddle will 
do it, the humorous or eloquent book will do it. 
But one or the other of these must be brought 
into play. Surely, the greatest need of the 
hour is that of inspiring wives with a lively 
sense of responsibility for having such hum- 
drum husbands, and husbands such humdrum 
wives. There is no sort of necessity of it, if 
they will but master and apply the simple Phi- 
losophy of the Kitten. 



II. 

THE CHINESE QUESTION. 

PHE story is told that, when, for the first 
time, the clerks of an American mercantile 
house in Canton, China, took it into their heads 
to relieve the monotony of ledger and desk by 
adjourning outside and limbering up their legs 
and spirits with a game of leap-frog, a profound 
impression was created on the " Celestial " mind. 
" Outside-barbarian " stock went up fifty per 
cent., as crowds of the natives of the "Flowery 
Kingdom " gathered round and looked on at 
delectations that seemed a long way ahead of 
anything it had entered into the mind of even 
a Confucius to conceive. 

Slow as the Chinese are to adopt the customs 
of foreign nations, this time they were swept 
off the feet of conservatism and tradition, and 
no sooner had they mentally mastered the 
tactics of the game than they determined to 
inaugurate the like on the spot. 



THE CHINESE QUESTION. 11 

And now, in turn, were the American clerks 
struck with a most surprising feature in the 
"Celestial" way of procedure. So profound 
the Chinese reverence for age, and so thor- 
oughly is youth trained to keep itself in the 
background, that it would have been thought 
outright impiety for any boy of thirty-five to 
have presumptuously ventured forward. So, 
only the elders threw off their skirts and " went 
in " ; the man of sixty being evidently expected, 
on pain of losing public respect, to leap higher, 
straddle wider, and keep his pig-tail flying out 
at a livelier angle than the man of fifty. Mean- 
while, the youths gathered seriously round with 
an expression of yearning in their almond eyes 
that revealed how pathetically they longed for 
the far-off day when they themselves should be 
old enough to play leap-frog. 

In utter oblivion of the fact that all profound 
truth comes from the East, infatuated Ameri- 
cans have actually reached the point of laugh- 
ing at such a scene, Not only do the young 
people of to-day think the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence settled the point that leap-frog be- 
longs to them exclusively, and that opodeldoc 
liniment is all their elders have a title to ; but 



12 BIRD-BOLTS. 

they arrogate to themselves the pre-emption of 
every shape and kind of amusement, warning off 
every man or woman of thirty as a " jumper " 
of their private claims. And yet, in the face 
and eyes of this intolerable tyranny, some 
Dennis Kearney has the front of brass to tell 
the nation that " the Chinese must go." No, 
Mr. Kearney, the one sole hope of the elderly 
portion of the American public lies in a league, 
offensive and defensive, with the Chinese people ; 
either this, or to be helplessly trampled under 
foot by the youth of the land. 

Amusements were never intended for young 
people. Let the flag of this rational conviction 
be nailed to the masthead and saluted with 
broadsides from every Chinese junk and Ameri- 
can iron-clad. Young people do not need 
amusements. They have animal spirits enough 
of their own. They can laugh at the veriest 
nothing, cut capers spontaneously, and sing 
songs for the mere fun of the thing. The main 
thing is to keep them at serious work, and suffer 
them to look forward to artificial diversions, 
such as billiards, skating, and dancing, only as 
something to come in when their powers begin 
to fail. 



THE CHINESE QUESTION. 13 

Older people, on the contrary, stand in im- 
perious need of just these appliances. They 
settle into ruts, their visages stiffen into grim 
asperity, their blood " creams and mantles like 
a standing-pool." No longer sufficiently stirred 
from within, external irritants must be applied. 
Then first comes the appropriate time of life 
for music and dancing, the plain quadrille for 
people of fifty, the more powerful stimulus of 
the Virginia reel for those of sixty. Violins to 
thrill the torpid nerves, cornets to start the 
blood with their ringing notes, and a floor so 
smooth and springy as to fairly run away wi«h 
the goutiest feet, — these are the rational stimu- 
lants prescribed by the Drs. Bowditch and 
Holmes, of China, to meet the nascent infirmi- 
ties of advancing age. " Go it, baldhead ! " 
would never be uttered twice, in this earthly 
sphere, by a Chinese sprig of thirty-five. 

Now, people will not look at this question 
seriously. The absence of all philosophical 
depth in the American mind is making the 
nation the shallowest, as well as the saddest, 
on the face of the earth. Instead of raising a 
Macedonian cry to the inhabitants of China, 
"Come over and help us!" demagogues are 



14 BIRD-BOLTS. 

actually stirring up the masses to set adrift the 
few that are already on hand for a rallying point 
against the youth of the land. 

Very grave ethnological authorities have as- 
serted that the people of the United States are 
fast reverting to the type of the North Ameri- 
can Indian. Let it never be forgotten that the 
youth of the North American Indians used to 
kill their parents when they grew too stiff and 
slow to keep up with the line of march. Cer- 
tainly the present rigid interdiction on the 
part of the young of all chance for elderly 
people to keep themselves limbered out looks 
like an insidious step in the same direction. 

Grave perils demand heroic remedies. Let it 
be repeated, therefore, that the one only way 
out of the evil that has come upon the land lies 
in a league, offensive and defensive, with the 
sole nation on earth that has made itself prac- 
tical master of the rational principle that amuse- 
ments were never intended for young people, 
and are no more appropriate to their age than 
spectacles or ear-trumpets. As boys and girls 
or youths and maidens, the young may be 
permitted, indeed, from time to time, to look 
on as their elders enjoy the sport; but the 



THE CHINESE QUESTION. 15 

diversions themselves, let it be once for all 
understood, are to be sacredly guarded as the 
fountain of perpetual youth to fathers and 
mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers. Then 
first may America aspire to produce examples 
as exhilarating to all after-generations as that of 
the fine old English lady, whose ultimate demise 
the poet records in the ringing couplet : — 

"She lived to the age of a hundred and ten. 
And died of a fall from a cherry-tree then." 



III. 

THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 

PHE story is told of a boiling little boy of 
seven, who had been sent to school and 
kept there a year, that, at the end of the period, 
on being saluted by an uncle with the question, 
" Weil, Johnny, what have you learned in all 
this time ? " he briskly and proudly replied, " I 
have learned to set." Very likely the uncle 
smiled in superior complacency, as elder people 
are apt to at the answers of children. It prob- 
ably never struck him what hosts of grown 
people there are who have never got so far and 
really learned " to set," either in the school of 
patient manual labor, or under the provocation 
of a hot temper. 

That little fellow was a philosopher. He had 
hit a root-principle the first time. In his earliest 
efforts at school, he had seen how the lesson 
had to fight it out for attention, now with the 
fly buzzing on the pane, now with the marbles 



THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 17 

rattling in the pocket, now with the new shoes 
on his feet, now with the question of how the 
thaw would affect the ice for skating in the 
afternoon. The method of subduing this gen- 
eral fly-away tendency and learning to concen- 
trate the powers in definite lines began to loom 
before him as the fundamental problem of all 
intellectual and moral education. A marvellous 
child ! A prophetic mind ! 

Boston, Sodom-and-Gomorrah-like as it is in 
its hardened pride, has not been left without 
more than one appealing witness of the truth 
enunciated by this despised and rejected boy. 
For many months, a large placard on Washing- 
ton Street announced " The Instructive Exhibi- 
tion of the Educated Fleas." The shallow and 
trifling passed it by in scorn. What could they, 
"the roof and crown of things," learn from 
these humbler members of the human family? 
But there were a chosen few, bitten by fiercer 
zeal for the welfare of the common race, who 
went in with hushed and attentive minds. 

The inner shrine was presided over by an old 
man with long gray locks, a philosophic dome 
of brow, and a velvet coat. At a glance, it was 
manifest that here stood an iEsop in disguise 
who talked " fleas " and meant " men." 



IS BIRD-BOLTS. 

" Why did you choose this particular member 
of the great common family, and consecrate the 
educational labors of a lifetime to him?" was 
the question put by a humble and reverential 
inquirer. It was uttered with that childlike 
docility that attests a mind very near the 
kingdom. 

"Because of the intensity and inveteracy of 
his disposition to hop" was the reply. 

The answer seemed enigmatical, but the lowly 
inquirer was not daunted. " Might it please 
you to explain more fully?" 

"Willingly," resumed the philosopher. "I 
wished to illustrate the fundamental question 
of all education in the peculiar personality of 
the flea; because, just as patriotism glories in 
the tremendous odds at Thermopylae, so would 
I have right education glory in the like odds 
at which it finds itself with the flea. You 
know something of his nature. It is almost 
impossible to concentrate his fly-away attention 
on any serious subject. Now he is here, now 
there, now everywhere. Mothers have told me, 
with tears in their eyes, that it was just the 
same with their John ; and I determined to try 
to do something to still this universal Rama 



THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 19 

voice of lamentation and weeping. Sustained 
by such motives, I closed in mightily with the 
problem of the hop in the flea. I saw that, 
unless I could get this out of him, it was all 
over with the hoj)e of his education, and that 
time and money and yearning would be only 
wasted on him. 

"One thing was clear: some tremendous in- 
ducement not to hop must be brought to bear. 
But how to bring it baffled me for years. At 
last, in an instantaneous, lightning-flash of in- 
spiration the whole solution blazed upon me. 
I was shaving at the time, and so electric were 
the shocks of transport that I rushed out into 
the passage, razor in hand, and face all afoam 
with lather, shouting, ' Eureka, Eureka ! ' 

"Yet the idea was simple, I may add, like all 
great ideas that inaugurate new epochs. I took 
an ordinary pill-box, and, removing the top and 
bottom, substituted for them little circles of 
clear plate-glass. Inside the box I would then 
place a flea. Now, here let me observe that 
the restricted intelligence of the flea does not 
permit of his discriminating between the trans- 
parency of pure glass and the transparency of 
the atmosphere. He thinks the world is all 



20 BIRD-BOLTS. 

before him where to choose. So he executes 
a hop. Down he is knocked with a stunning 
blow. Pausing to rub his scalp for a moment, and 
in his confused state, thinking it all a strange 
mistake, he is up and at work again. Whack 
over the head, and down once more ! And now 
his soul is in a blaze of wrath. All day long 
is it hop and knock-down, hop and knock-down, 
till, at evening, he retires to bed in an exhausted 
condition, and with a manifest tendency to 
reflection. 

" A night's sleep, however, seems to refresh 
him. Rome was not built in a day. The in- 
stinct transmitted by generations of nomadic 
ancestors stirs mightily within him, and he re- 
sumes his previous operations. The result, I 
need hardly say, is equally unsatisfactory. Five 
days pass, and, lo ! the lesson is learned forever. 
A sense of absolute pyschologic connection be- 
tween hop ami knock-down is organically built 
up in his brain. The conception of fixed, im- 
mutable, universal law has mastered his intelli- 
gence. From that time to his dying day, he 
can never be induced to hop again. You may 
prick him with a needle; he will walk away, 
but hop he will not. I can then command his 



THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 21 

attention and proceed to the higher problems of 
his education." 

Ah ! why cannot this great philosopher, now 
that he has got through with fleas, try his hand 
on human beings ? Are they not also men and 
brothers? Even of our merchants, politicians, 
and divines, how many of them have got as 
far as Johnny and ever learned " to set " ? 
Indeed, a nervous restlessness that leads to a 
hop-skip-and-a-jump way of looking at every- 
thing is at the bottom of the chaotic state of 
the present time. What is Congress but largely 
a gathering of uneducated fleas, here, there, 
and everywhere, on finance, free trade, and civil 
service ? 

Is -it too wild and optimistic a hope to in- 
dulge in, that somewhere, in the seclusion of a 
student's cell, the great flea philosopher is con- 
secrating his remaining sands of life to devising, 
say, a political economy pill-box in which to 
educate a score or so of representatives; and 
that, through the simple process of making 
them work off their surplus activity, by butting 
long enough against transparent laws to begin 
to surmise that, even though they do not see it, 
there must be something in those laws? Far 



22 BIRD-BOLTS. 

more edifying to the nation would it prove to 
behold them diligently practising there, instead 
of skipping round from mass meeting to mass 
meeting, and exciting the rest of the fleas. 



IV. 

ROUTING INERTIA. 

T T OW common an experience, during a sum- 
mer vacation, is something like the fol- 
lowing: A still, languid-feeling morning. The 
breeze which, several miles away on the ocean, 
is filling the sails, has not yet made itself felt on 
shore. A sense of physical inertia pervades the 
system. Will tends no-whither. Imagination 
is listless, and can summon up no object of de- 
sire. At last a companion, some faint re-birth 
of energy reviving in him, breaks in on the slug- 
gish calm: "We shall lose the whole day if we 
suffer this mood to hold. Let's be off! By 
and by we shall wake up, as body and soul get 
roused with a little exertion, and then shall we 
see what fools we would have been to waste the 
golden sands of such a day." 

A faint, reluctant consent is given. There is 
no heart in the matter. Indolently, and simply 
because too sluggish to resist, the three or four 
move down to the boat-house and get out the 
boat. 



24 BIRD-BOLTS. 

At the outset, rowing proves a weariness and 
a drag. That peculiar secretion that exudes 
from a spruce oar and exerts such invigorating 
effects on the associated muscles of man has not 
yet begun to flow. Ere long, however, symp- 
toms of a revival are clearly manifest. The 
breeze that has been playing out at sea is work- 
ing inwards and begins to fan the cheeks. In 
sympathetic response, ripples and wavelets are 
dancing on the waters, and, like the stimulating 
vibrations of violins on the waltzers' feet, are 
already setting on a new pulse-beat in the 
rowers' systems. For who can long resist the 
contagion of the environing life and beauty? 
Fleecy cumulus clouds are floating in the sky. 
Exquisite gradations of tints are flowing into 
one another on the water. Picturesque islands, 
lighthouse-crowned, are emerging from the part- 
ing mists. And now, the more vital stroke of 
the oar and the frequent exclamations of rap- 
turous delight attest that the whole party is 
awake in eye and sense, in love and social joy. 

How dangerously does a little virtue exalt a 
man ! Overhear the talk of these late so gela- 
tinous companions. Oh ! the mercilessness of 
their contempt for the languid dawdlers they 



ROUTING INERTIA. 25 

have left behind ! In the new mood of exhilara- 
tion, how impossible for these young heroes to 
throw themselves back into that molluscous stage 
of semi-consciousness from which they have 
been so suddenly evolved into living souls ! 

An hour and a half of steady rowing, — ac- 
companied from time to time by that change of 
rowers which breaks all tendency to selfish in- 
sistence on having the entire enjoyment to one's 
self, — and the happy party have entered the 
mouth of some Saco river that pours its waters 
into the sea. On the one hand, the ocean with 
its eternal surf rolling up the masses of beach 
sand ; on the other, the river steadily forcing its 
way out to the deep. What an eloquent symbol 
of the struggle of each human soul! Then, 
quick succeeding, the peaceful beauty of the 
stream itself, its salt and sparkling tidal waters 
set off with the rich verdure of the overhanging 
trees and velvet grass-slopes. 

And now, how irresistible the invitation to 
shoot the boat into a shady nook and leap into 
the delicious flood, — to dive and float and swim 
and shout in pure delight, — and thence to get 
such fresh invigoration as to bethink one's self of 
a dear friend enjoying his summer sojourn in a 



26 BIRD-BOLTS. 

spot some miles away, and so to start off over 
sand-dunes and through fragrant pine woods till 
the beach is struck, and far along its graceful 
crescent the house is reached, and fresh social 
delight is added to the already overflowing day. 

But the hours reel out too much of joy to 
unfold in a single or a score of papers ; and, after 
all, the party have yet to row back home, unless 
it prove that the fond wives of some of them, 
suspecting their husbands too happy by them- 
selves, shall come after them by sail, and take 
the row-boat into domestic tow. 

Enough, however, has been said to make clear 
the point to emphasize. It is this : How fatally 
is man perpetually losing through failing to 
overcome the initial inertia that so often drugs 
the system, and holds him back from rousing up 
that blood of body and blood of mind without 
whose vital circulation no real life breathes ! 
How infinitely does he often gain by a single 
hour of braver resolution, and that for the sim- 
ple reason that he lives and moves and has his 
being in a universe of such overflowing bounty 
that he needs but to put himself into vital con- 
tact with its arteries to feel himself flooded with 
a wealth of joy and beauty ! 



ROUTING INERTIA. 27 

Poets are forever crying that the springs are 
dry within their souls and they can neither 
sing nor soar; saints forever bemoaning that, 
dry as dust and ashes, their eyes melt with no 
tears of compassion, their lips are eloquent with 
no thanksgiving. Would they could learn the 
secret of the simple rowers who rout the inertia 
of an otherwise lost vacation-day. Man cannot 
make his own music. It must be made in and 
through him by the genius of objects and scenes 
that use him as their resonant instrument. 
Evermore is nature and human life full of sights 
and experiences, with all the fulness of adven- 
ture, inspiration, and pathos in them to make 
heroes out of cowards, poets of commonplace 
men, sons of consolation of the callous or indif- 
ferent, were not man too sluggish and inert to 
subject himself to their power. 



V. 

HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 

/^VNE of the most vivid recollections of my 
^~ > ^ boyhood days, in the far-away time when 
railroads were as yet in their infancy, is of the 
keen delight witli which I would stand by and 
watch the loading-tip and starting out on their 
journey of the trains of huge, canvas-covered, 
hoop-roofed wagons, that used to set out from 
my native city with loads of merchandise to 
cross the Alleghanies and distribute their freight 
through the settlements in Ohio and Kentucky. 
Once in a while, however, the scene took on 
an altogether overpowering interest. An im- 
migrant ship had arrived in port, and around 
the huge inn-yard were gathered in groups 
crowds of strange-speaking, clumsily-clad men 
and women, together with no end of stumpy 
little boys and tow-headed — so I called them, 
flaxen-haired would have been more respectful 
— little girls, not to speak of a liberal sprink- 
ling of moon-faced babies in arms. 



HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 29 

To see them — whole families — pile their 
rude chests and bundled-up feather-beds into 
the wagons, and then crowd in on top, the 
eager-eyed boys and girls peering out through 
rents in the canvas, and the little babies taking 
to the strange, new life with the serene content- 
ment of the untroubled age of six months, — all 
this was better than a play to me. Under the 
wagons hung buckets and cooking-utensils, while 
among us on-looking boys enchanting traditions 
prevailed of how at night these were taken 
down, blazing camp-fires were kindled, fat bucks 
stepped hospitably up to present the hungry 
wanderers with rich quarters of venison, and 
forthwith the crimson-lit woods became redolent 
of the fragrance of roasting joints, while stories 
and laughter rang out on every side. 

Alas ! life at home looked prosaic enough in 
comparison ; and, amidst, it must be owned, a 
great deal of conflicting counter-testimony, the 
best proof to my maturer judgment of the filial 
piety that must have marked my early years I 
find in the fact that I did not actually run away 
and embrace the fortunes of these fascinating 
adventurers. 

Later on in life, when I began to read a little 



30 BIRD-BOLTS. 

history, few things seized upon my imagination 
so mightily as the story of the migrations of the 
vast hordes who, starting from their original 
seats in Central Asia, began, wave on wave, to 
spread themselves southward over Persia and 
India, and westward over the whole of Europe. 
In fancy, I delighted to picture them on their 
march, rude and barbarous, skin-clad, and armed 
with clubs and bows, their more delicate women 
and children piled on clumsy, solid-wheeled 
carts, pulled by oxen, their stronger women 
striding along under heavy burdens, or with 
lusty twins and triplets on their backs, the lands 
they traversed black with gloomy forests, or 
quaking with perilous bogs. 

To think of all this as going on for thousands 
upon thousands of years, wave succeeding wave, 
one horde pouring down upon the Greek penin- 
sula, and at last developing the splendid civili- 
zation of Greece ; another surging on into Italy, 
and, after long, wrestling ages, building up the 
stupendous ' fabric of the Roman Empire; still 
others, an endless sea of racing billows, sweep- 
ing over what are now France and Spain, over- 
running the vast domains of Germany, Scan- 
dinavia, Holland, and, unchecked for long by 



HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 31 

the British Channel, at last storming across in 
their open vessels and conquering the islands ; 
all this ceaselessly going forward, until the here- 
tofore resistless inundations found themselves 
face to face with the stormy Atlantic, and a 
voice sounded in their ears from its eternal 
wastes, " So far shalt thou go and no farther, 
and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,*' — 
why, to learn of a truth that these endless hosts 
were throughout of one kith and kin, that for 
Sun and Moon, and Father and Mother, and 
Brother and Daughter, and all the most common 
objects and relations, they had and have to-day 
practically the same words in the Babel of lan- 
guages they have got split up into, — I say all 
this in its rich and rare combination intoxicated 
my mind with that sense of exhilarating delight 
in unity which never fails to thrill through one. 
when into any weltering chaos of particulars a 
ray of light pierces with the revelation of a 
principle, binding in its operation as that of 
gravitation over the planetary system. 

A breathlessly long sentence that last, it must 
be owned! But then, only think how uncon- 
scionable a procession! 

Still, to me at least, the full climax of delight 



32 BIRD-BOLTS. 

in contemplating this stupendous unity in his- 
tory had not come yet. The broad, tempest- 
swept Atlantic lay in the path of it. This, with 
ignorance of the meaning of the history that had 
followed after. Suddenly, however, — I recall 
the joy of it now as the idea first struck me, — 
I saw in a flash in the long, lumbering trains of 
wagons of my childhood, starting out to cross 
the Alleghanies, — chests, feather-beds, women 
perched, on boxes, boys and girls peeping 
through the canvas, babies all ignorant of the 
mighty generations of which they were to be- 
come fathers and mothers, — simply the pro- 
longation of the old skin-clad, oak-wheeled, 
club-and-bow-armed migrations that had origi- 
nally started out from Central Asia. 

A few years more, and this latest shape of 
the long procession had abandoned the slow- 
moving wagon and taken to the flying immi- 
grant-train. Still a few years, and the on-rolling 
tide was to find itself on the shores of Cali- 
fornia and Oregon, face to face with an even 
mightier ocean than the Atlantic, and with 
what destiny ahead, on the Sandwich Islands 
and mayhap in Asia itself, no man is prophet 
enough to foretell. And so, never do I now 



HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 33 

happen in, in our Boston & Albany Station, 
upon a fresh-arrived ship-load of fair-haired 
Danes and Swedes, sitting round on their packs, 
nursing their babies, staring about them with 
strange eyes, and speaking strange speech, but, 
lo ! before my very eyes, the latest wavelet 
simply of the vast ocean of the allied races 
which, billow on billow, and till lost to the 
farthest ranging eye, has been keeping up the 
one stupendous movement. A fellow-feeling 
comes over me, a sense of kindred blood in my 
veins, as I find myself witnessing in very act 
how my own fathers and mothers, for endless 
generations back, went out to seek their fort- 
unes in Greece, in Gaul, in Germany, in Den- 
mark, in England, and, last and best, in Amer- 
ica. And so I feel sympathetically moved to pat 
little Hans on his chubby cheek, ask his fond 
mother how old he is, dart benevolently across 
the street to the nearest candy-shop to buy him 
a lemon-ball or "jaw-breaker," as hospitable 
greeting from the New World to the Old, and, 
then and there learn afresh, through the sweet 
simplicity with which he takes to it, bow "one 
touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 



VI. 

HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 

T N this materialistic age, the money value of 
philosophers is in danger of being under- 
rated. Time is it that the eyes of all interested 
in real estate were opened to the fact. 

Let a modest, unobtrusive man like Mr. Emer- 
son settle in a little Concord village, and forth- 
with the tax-assessor estimates him at a paltry 
fifty dollars a year ; while the butcher, who has 
read somewhere an idle account of Pythagoras' 
addiction to a diet of beans, sets him down at 
an even smaller figure in the way of chops and 
steaks. 

Time brings its revenges. The philosopher 
becomes famous, and the village shares his fame. 
A vast amount of gratuitous advertising is thus 
done for it. Moreover, birds of a feather flock 
together. First, one literary man seeks a habi- 
tation there, then another, then another. Lots 
go up in value. Anon follow the crowds of 



HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 35 

lion-hunters, and the hotel gets its profit out of 
dispensing many a meal and lodging. 

But the end is not yet. At last, the day 
arrives when the outside public becomes openly 
vociferous, and demands that a school of philos- 
ophy shall be set up in the place, that such worn 
and weary public may refresh itself in the sum- 
mer heats with protracted weeks of metaphysi- 
cal delights. As strictly logical result, a spa- 
cious hall is built to accommodate the flood of 
hearers; while hospitable citizens find them- 
selves called upon to entertain no end of board- 
ers at ten dollars a week. Meanwhile, villages 
without a philosopher for a nest-egg languish 
in poverty-stricken obscurity. 

In old historic countries, the working of this 
sort of thing is far more rationally understood 
than in this new-fledged land. Larger induce- 
ments will many a town or hamlet across the 
water offer for the burial of the dead body of a 
sage or saint in its cemetery than it would for 
the meeting of a political convention of eating 
and drinking " bummers." In truth, there is 
more money in the saint. The highest financial 
authority, Mill's or Bagehot's, vouches for the 
fact that, from the date of the interment of 



36 BIRD-BOLTS. 

Mahomet in Medina, the steady rise in value of 
corner-lots and of the profits of pilgrim board- 
ing-houses has proved the bones of the prophet 
the best paying investment the city ever made. 
Because, forsooth, the individual philosopher or 
saint may personally eat very little, and drink 
even less, is that any valid reason for overlook- 
ing the crowds of less ascetic disciples who will 
ultimately flock to his home or grave ? Not of 
this narrow mind the real estate operators of 
old, of whom it is recorded that 

"Seven Grecian cities fought for Homer dead, 
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.''' 

High time is it, then, that something decisive 
were done in the way of impressing on the 
minds of far-seeing and energetic men the neces- 
sity of greater exertion to render the now de- 
pressed villages of Massachusetts so attractive 
that increasing numbers will be led to settle in 
them and spend their money there. The appeal 
for culture has been based on entirely too vis- 
ionary grounds. All important is it to have it 
clearly understood that the coming man in real 
estate will need to be of a very different type 
from him who sufficed for the narrow and ignorant 



HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 37 

past. The dollar of a philosopher is as good as 
the dollar of a dandy. That the former chooses 
to fool it away on metaphysics, while the latter 
more wisely invests in waist-coats, is a wholly 
irrelevant matter. In either case, the money 
stays in the place. 

Now, therefore, that, for the second time in 
history the little village of Concord, through the 
establishment of a School of Philosophy, 

" Has fired a shot heard round the world,'* 

would it not pay some of the sharp, driving 
men, say of Natick, Needham, or Weston, to run 
over and spend a week there during the summer 
heats in painful attendance on a course of lect- 
ures upon Kant by Dr. Harris, or upon Plato 
by Dr. Jones, if only to get an inkling of what 
unexpected devices may be hit upon by a shrewd 
operator, like Mr. Bronson Alcott, for building 
up a town. 



VII. 

NIL ADMIRARI. 

\\ 7" HEN, some thirty years ago, the United 
States fleet was sent out to Japan with 
instructions to the exclusive islanders, "Either 
you must become more sociable, or we will blow 
your forts and towns to atoms," the American 
naval officers were highly vexed at the bearing 
of the high and mighty government officials 
deputed to greet the commodore on the deck 
of his flagship. 

Conscious that he commanded the noblest 
war-vessel in the American navy, the com- 
modore had expected to produce a startling 
impression on his visitors. Great, then, his dis- 
gust at finding the Japanese dignitaries betray- 
ing no more surprise than had they been invited 
to inspect a common porgy-boat. In vain were 
they conducted through the elegant cabins, 
along the awful monsters of the gun-deck, and 
into the engine-room with its Titanic machinery. 



NIL ADMIRARI. 39 

At last, the exhibition of such superior indif- 
ference proved more than flesh and blood could 
stand, and the irate commander gave a secret 
sign to the engineer to sound the steam-whistle. 
In an instant a screech rent the air as frightful 
as though the whole honor of the stars and 
stripes hung on the issue ; and, joy to tell, the 
long-robed officials jumped in terror out of 
their embroidered slippers, and fled wildly in 
all directions. 

Now these particular Japanese were diplo- 
mats, who felt they had the reputation of their 
country to maintain in the presence of outside 
barbarians ; and very likely, while in exterior 
bearing as stolidly indifferent as so many Indian 
chiefs at a White House reception, were in- 
wardly taking notes of everything. So they do 
not forfeit all title to respect, however strong 
the temptation to indulge in a sly laugh at their 
expense. A very different thing is it, however, 
with the class who, with no country to stand up 
for or cause to represent, affect as private indi- 
viduals to have attained to a Buddhistic Nirvana 
of Nil Admirari, over which the world has no 
more power. 
. The fundamental tenet of the Nil Admirari 



40 BIRD-BOLTS. 

sect is that all admiration or enthusiasm is 
symptomatic of, as they elegantly term it, " ver- 
dancy." Of the slightest contact of this color 
with the immaculateness of their persons, they 
evince as holy a horror as the Colorado beetle 
at the application of Paris Green. In other 
words, they insist that admiration is vulgar, and 
" the mark of the beast." The sons of God that 
sang together at the first creation, they hold to 
have been partially excusable on the score of 
being taken at an unfair advantage by the sud- 
denness of the divine operations, but charitably 
hope for them that they have got beyond that 
sort of thing now. As for themselves, they 
spare no pains to become fortified against the 
possibility of such infirmity, and to this end 
believe most devoutly in the efficacy of foreign 
travel. To Switzerland they journey, to get 
drugged with mountain scenery ; to Germany, to 
get cloyed with music; to Italy, to reach utter 
satiety in the matter of churches, frescoes, and 
statuary. Then are they fit to come home and 
be worshipped. The victory over the worst the 
world can do is complete. They have exhausted 
its depths, in their minds synonymous with their 
own personal shallows. 



NIL ADMIRARI. 41 

What a rebuke to the "verdant" vivacity of 
immature elder people to dine out at times with 
some of these finished results of nil admirari 
culture ! To see an impetuous, bald-headed old 
fellow break out in sudden enthusiasm over 
some remembered bit of mountain-climbing in 
Switzerland with the remark that he would be 
willing to try it again on crutches; and then to 
observe the look of half-pitying condescension 
with which some youth of twenty-five turns 
languidly to study the queer old antiquity that 
" has not got over that sort of thing, you 
know ! " surely, here is an instructive sj^ectacle. 
Half the time the old gentleman blushes, and 
stammers a sort of half-apology ; says he knows 
he is an old fool, and lapses into silence. 

In truth, it takes a good deal of a hero to 
stand his ground against a finished nil admirari 
man. A terrible power inheres in one who has 
sucked the vast terrestrial orange, and thrown 
away the peel. But some day the hero will 
come who will blandly remark, "Young man, 
I freely admit that earth has exhausted her 
surprises for you in the way of Alps, .^Etnas, 
Michel Angelos, and Beethovens. As well might 
a pair of parlor-bellows think to lift billows on 



42 BIRD-BOLTS. 

the bosom of the Atlantic as these puny powers 
of nature and genius on the ocean of your mind. 
But one unexplored abyss of wonder yet re- 
mains. Deep calleth unto deep within its 
bounds. Contemplate it with breathless awe, 
and it will heave even your imperturbable calm 
into motions of amazement. It is the height 
and the depth of how literally infinite and un- 
speakable an ass you are. There, go to now, 
take thine own furry head into thy adoring 
arms, hang over it, Titania-like, and lovingly 
croon to it, — 

"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery hed, 
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, 
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek, smooth head, 
And kiss thy fair, large ears, my gentle joy." 



VIII. 

OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 

A SHARP pang it costs the fruit-grower to 
go out with his scissors in the spring and 
snip off three-fourths of the young pears, plums, 
and peaches on his trees. Some tender natures 
can never nerve themselves up to the feat, and 
are duly rewarded in the autumn with bushels 
of shrivelled abortions instead of a few blush- 
ing and fragrant specimens that are the poetry 
of the senses. 

Alas ! man is forever lifting on high his 
lamentation over the hard fate he is subjected 
to in the matter of painful sacrifice. But what 
are his woes in comparison with those, say, of 
a matronly codfish that has gone through the 
necessary preliminaries for a family of three 
million young fry, or an oyster that has done 
the like for another of ninety-five million ? In 
the nature of things, not over one in a thousand 
of the youthful aspirants can ever hope to reach 



44 BIRD-BOLTS. 

the period when he shall be served up boiled 
and with egg-sauce, or eaten raw on the shell 
with a squeeze of lemon-juice. 

The pathetic story, told now these many 
generations, of the woman, whose husband bru- 
tally drowned her because she would persist in 
ejaculating, day and night, the word "scissors," 
and who, even after her head was under water 
and the agonies of suffocation had set in, still 
kept her fingers above the surface vibrating in 
quivering imitation of the opening and shutting 
blades of that indispensable instrument, has 
unquestionably been mistakenly interpreted. 
In the light of a more thoughtful age, it looks 
highly probable that she was, in reality, an 
untimely martyr to the faith that the one way 
to perfection lies in going through life snipping 
away untiringly at nine out of ten of all the 
objects and ideas that venture to show a head, 
ay, and that, when breath failed her, she still 
resolutely struggled to symbolize her creed to 
a dying world. 

High time is it that a new saint were canon- 
ized, and most reverentially should so long-tra- 
duced a witness be commended to the prayerful 
consideration of His Holiness Leo XIII. Too 



OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 45 

many, already, the martyrs who are suffering 
under the imputation of dying out of pure 
temper and ugliness, instead of out of love. 

The faith of this blessed woman once estab- 
lished in the heart . of a wiser generation, what 
work would at once be set on foot in every 
department of human activity! "Better one 
fragrant rosy peach than a bushel of withered 
deformities" would be everywhere the motto. 
How soon, for example, would an unintermitting 
hail of superfluous adjectives be heard to rattle 
down from the rhetorical tree to be left to lie 
on the ground and rot, while a single one 
should silently gather sweetness and sprightli- 
ness enough into itself to leave an exhilarating 
taste in the mouth ! Well enough is it for nat- 
uralists to expatiate on the incredible fecundity 
of the cod. But what is this trifle to the brain 
fecundity of press and pulpit writers in the pro- 
creation of adjectives? Sharks are happily pro- 
vided to thin out the superfluous codlings, but 
what shall do the like for the adjectives ? No 
power short of the religion of Our Holy Lady of 
the Shears. 

Alike in the education of children and the 
proper training of husbands by their wives, it 



46 BIRD-BOLTS. 

has long been acknowledged that the important 
object aimed at is too often missed through the 
excessive volubility with which instruction and 
reproof are administered. The best of husbands 
is after all limited in mental grasp. Though 
his spirit be willing, his flesh is weak, and he 
cannot entertain in a single brain all the loose, 
incoherent, and often contradictory statements 
that are made to him about his conduct. An 
exquisite stinger at the end of the whip-lash, a 
stinger twisted hard into a terminal knot, and 
then applied, with fine discrimination, just 
where the nerves are nearest the skin, would 
prove infinitely more effective. The woman 
who should quietly devote a thoughtful forenoon 
to the elaboration of one of these, and then, 
when the time came to make the application, 
have the self-control to feel that, blood once 
drawn, it would be far better not to weaken the 
effect by loose phraseology, — such a woman 
would unquestionably witness far better results 
in her husband. 

Thin out the fruit then everywhere. It is 
hard, no doubt, to see the dear little baby pear- 
lings and plumlings drop to. the ground. But 



OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 47 

the tree has not sap enough to more than half- 
starve such an inordinate load of them. It is 
like calling upon one nurse to suckle a whole 
foundling-hospital of babies. 



IX. 

TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 

HP HE worst of the matter is that every little 
sprig of a boy, six years old, assumes to 
know all about the meaning of this deceptive 
word, causation. The cause of anything ? Why, 
it is what makes a thing do what it does. The 
cause of a barn burning down, of a powder 
magazine exploding? Why, it is the spark of 
fire that gets into, the hay, and makes it burst 
into flame, or into the gunpowder and makes 
it go off. Excellent, prompt little fellow ! 
But how if the spark had fallen on a mass of 
railroad iron, or into a potato-bin ? You know 
how often you children say, " It takes two to 
make a bargain ! " 

The fact is, a too vivid and one-sided per- 
ception is playing tricks with the mind just 
here. Some salient element out of a complex 
variety rivets on itself attention, to the neglect 
of other more latent factors involved in the 



TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 49 

case, and that especial one we proceed to call 
the cause. Oh, yes! a spark of fire is a very 
lively thing. We have felt the burning touch 
of one on the back of the hand; nay, only last 
Wednesday, on the railway train, actually got 
one into our eye, causing us over-hastily to use 
a word set dowm in the Index Expurgatorius 
of religious newspapers. Meanwhile, the gun- 
powder in the magazine reposes a stolid, glum, 
and reticent compound, keeping its thoughts 
locked up in its own bosom, and, simply to look 
at it, the last thing in the world we should ever 
suspect of an explosive temper. 

Now, all this will do very well for a child's 
reasoning, but for grown men and women to 
be contented with, it is another matter. For 
them, at any rate, the first step in rational 
education lies in learning that the efficient cause 
of any and every phenomenon in the world can 
be found nowhere else but in the combined and 
reacting energies of all the forces that enter 
into a given result. When a ruddy fire is glow- 
ing on the hearth, for an intelligent being to 
say, " In an ignited match lay the cause of all 
this continuous light and heat," would surely be 
a very ignorant conception. No, he declares, 



50 BIRD-BOLTS. 

on the contrary, the real efficient cause, would 
you come in contact with it, seek it through 
doing your best to make the invisible visible, — 
seek it in the quick, fierce nature of the fiery 
oxygen everywhere diffused through the room, 
and in the equally eager properties of the hy- 
drogen and carbon stored up in the wood. The 
living, breathing marriage of these means fire, 
just as essentially as the contact of youth and 
maiden means love. 

Go deeper, then, for cause: behold it in its 
mysterious and mighty depths, as it lies latent 
in the allied natures of the objects all around, — 
objects which, however inert they look, are in 
reality tense with electric or even volcanic ener- 
gies. A boiler explodes. Steam did it, says the 
hasty observer. No, steam did not do it. Steam 
and boiler did it together. " Why did you blow 
me up?" cries the boiler. "Why did you dam 
me in?" retorts the steam, and with equal 
reason. Steam quietly evaporating from an 
open kettle never yet exploded anything. 

It would be easy enough to get along with 
topsy-turvy notions of causation, did they con- 
fine themselves to mere physical matters. But, 
alas ! people will insist on carrying them equally 



TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 51 

into the domain of morals, — a thing which works 
no end of evil. Here, for example, is a man 
violently angry and indulging in ugly epithets, 
indeed looking around him in a way to indicate 
he would like to lay hands on something more 
like a brick than an epithet. You know him, 
perhaps, and going up say, " Why, Mr. Jones, 
what is the cause of all this ? " " The cause of 
it? It is what that infernal Brown just said 
to me. The most irritating and utterly exas- 
perating fellow I ever met ! " Meanwhile, you 
yourself, with a somewhat wider and more phil- 
osophical idea of causation, feel that part of the 
explosion ought to be attributed to the amount 
of camphene, nitro-glycerine, and other extra- 
hazardous moral freight stored away in the 
interior chambers of your friend Mr. Jones 
himself ; and you mildly venture to suggest 
that there is, after all, something in the way a 
man is disposed to look at a thing. Your gentle 
expostulation, however, has no other effect, it 
may be, but to bring on a second explosion. " If 
there is anything in this world I hate," breaks 
out your swiftly rekindling friend, " it is, when 
a man is all afire over some outrageous insult, 
to have a soft-lipped, mincing fellow come along 



52 BIRD-BOLTS. 

and say, ' Oh, the man didn't mean to do it, 
didn't mean to do it!'" And so a fresh illustra- 
tion, and this time a rousing one, of Mr. Jones's 
conception of causation. He has got just as 
far in his philosophy as the little boy who will 
hear of nothing but the spark of fire, and thinks 
the loft stuffed with hay and the magazine full 
of powder-kegs only a minor matter. Moral 
causes, to Mr. Jones, lie all outside of himself. 
In Brown, and those like him, are stored up the 
explosive forces sure to break out in the quiet 
and innocent people with whom these first come 
in exasperating contact. 

Once in a while you do a favor to some one, a 
poor woman perhaps, and years after find that 
the memory of it is as green as Christmas 
boughs in her heart. Meanwhile, you your- 
self have bolted ten thousand greater favors 
from others, and forgotten all about them. 
Still, very pleasant is it to feel that for so long 
a period she has every day cherished grateful 
affection toward you, and seen you halo-crowned 
with a bright aureole. One thing, at least, you 
can learn from her, if you have a gram of hu- 
mility : namely, that you have no more reason 
to take credit to yourself for all this continuous 



TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 53 

radiance of spirit than would a scientifically 
educated lucifer-match, that, thanks to chemis- 
try, has been taught to know better, have a right 
to arrogate the like to itself of the great ruddy 
fire in the chimney-place. Infinitesimal part, 
indeed, of the cause of her glowing and con^ 
tinuous gratitude were you and your act. But 
the bulk of it lay in the solid back-log and 
forestick of love in her own heart, and these 
in perpetual open-air contact with the free 
draft of eternal, inexhaustible spirit. Had she 
been but of thin, substanceless, pine-shaving 
nature, a short flash had been the answer, and 
then all over. 



X. 

WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 

SEVERAL years ago there died in Western 
Massachusetts a venerable lady who for 
fifty years had been possessed with the singular 
whim of preserving and making a kind of mu- 
seum of comparative fashions out of her old 
bonnets. Beginning with the one she had worn 
as a blooming bride, she never rested till she had 
hung up at the end of the line the last that had 
crowned her snow-white head. Young people 
fortunate enough to be admitted to the attic, on 
pegs around which was suspended this chrono- 
logical attestation of the mutability of human 
taste, were wont to go into fits of laughter over 
the spectacle. In startled imagination they saw 
themselves confronted with an antediluvian 
epoch, in which such terrific megatheria and 
pterodactyles of bonnets prevailed that the 
wonder of wonders was, how the most un- 
daunted of men could have ever dared a mar- 



WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 55 

riage-proposal to any face ensconced beneath 
such nodding horrors. So are the young in the 
pride of to-day ever tempted to make sport of 
their grandmothers, — grandmothers, perhaps, 
who, in the flush of their prime, could have 
done an execution from out under their sugar- 
scoops, with their spirited eyes and blooming 
cheeks, that would have left their presumptuous 
ridiculers of to-day nowhere in the race. 

A sensation very closely akin to that pro- 
duced by the old lady's museum of the com- 
parative anatomy of bonnets awaits every 
reader of a curious little j>aper, by Edward J. 
Young, chronicling and annotating the " Sub- 
jects for Master's Degree in Harvard College, 
from 1655 to 1791." It is a pamphlet to be 
kept under lock and key, and sacredly guarded 
from falling into the hands of young people 
under thirty; for it is calculated to destroy the 
last shreds of reverence for their ancestors left 
in them, and to render them so intolerable in 
their conceit that they will need to be drowned 
outright like so many blind puppies and kittens. 
Indeed, it requires a mind deeply rooted in 
veneration to read the bare titles of the subjects 
on which so man)' of the great lawyers, physi- 



56 BIRD-BOLTS. 

cians, and divines of those primitive days exer- 
cised their nascent powers, and that, too, in 
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew dissertations, without 
a certain dangerous feeling of contempt for 
them, doughty champions as they proved them- 
selves iu laying the foundations of a great 
nation. 

" When Balaam's Ass spoke, was there any 
Change in its Organs?" Such was the grave 
thesis with which the Josiah Quincy of 1731 
came before his breathless and expectant audi- 
tory on Commencement Day. Think of one 
of his descendants attempting to entertain his 
hearers with a like discussion in 1882! Still, as 
every one at that day regarded it as indisputa- 
ble fact of revelation that Balaam's ass could, 
and in point of fact did, articulate in good and 
grammatical Hebrew, intensely interesting at 
once the question, How did he manage to do 
it? An ass has, by nature, no vocal organs that 
fit him for anything but wheezing like an old 
pump. Were, then, these abortive organs so 
miraculously operated on that they, none the 
less, could do as effective and as melodious work 
as the human larynx? If so, what a stupendous 
thing is a miracle ! Did they, on the other 



WERE OUR AXCESTORS FOOLS? 57 

hand, require such preliminary alterations in 
structure as would approximate them to those 
of human beings, then, in turn, what an attesta- 
tion to the respect entertained by Deity for his 
own laws and methods! Is it difficult to con- 
ceive, then, that, as the heights and abysses of 
his subject opened on the imagination of the 
youthful Quincy, he should have electrified his 
audience with one of those characteristic out- 
bursts of fiery eloquence that have for genera- 
tions since distinguished his family ? 

Legion is the number of prematurely thought- 
ful children who have been kept awake in in- 
tellectual wrestle all night, after hearing the 
startling question propounded, " Which was 
first, the hen or the egg? 11 Who can doubt, 
then, that an equal night of restless tossing to 
and fro on a sleepless bed was the metaphysical 
result in the mind of many an auditor of this 
exhaustive discussion of the momentous theme, 
"When Balaam's Ass spoke, was there any 
Change in its Organs?" 

Turn now to the questions relating to physi- 
ology and medicine. "Did Adam have an 
Umbilical Cord?" was the thesis stoutly de- 
fended in the negative by the celebrated Jeremy 



58 BIRD-BOLTS. 

Beluap, later pastor of the Federal Street 
Church and founder of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society. This was in 1765. 

Graceless freshmen of to-day would break out 
in boisterous laughter at the bare announcement 
of such a question. But does it not, in reality, go 
down to the very root of things? If Adam was 
actually created with an umbilical cord, why 
did he have it, whence did he get it, what was 
it originally attached to? Was it an organ 
merely prophetic of something to come in his 
descendants? Was it thrown in gratuitously 
to constitute him absolutely one with the race 
he was so soon to ruin, and thus secure the 
solidarity of the species? Perfectly well did 
young Jeremy Belnap know what he was about. 
He had encountered the same knotty question 
that fifty to a hundred years later was to set 
Cuvier and St. Hilaire, Agassiz and Darwin at 
loggerheads; and again must a sleepless night 
have been prepared for the more intellectual of 
his auditory. 

Under the guise, thus, of the most unim- 
peachable orthodoxy, it is evident that all kinds 
of scientific heresies were getting agitated in 
those colonial days. Why did not some pro- 



WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 59 



phetic Teiresias or Cassandra start up with a 
warning cry? 

This laughing, then, at one's ancestors, be- 
cause they put fundamental questions in an old- 
fashioned way, is likely to turn out quite as 
idle a thing as laughing at one's grandmother 
because she became a sweet, true-hearted bride 
in what is irreverently termed an " old guy of 
a bonnet." It is a shape of conceit that needs 
to be abated, for it infests all ranks and pro- 
fessions of men. 

Lawyers, for example, of to-day plume them- 
selves very highly on the intricate and puzzling 
legal dilemmas they raise for discussion in their 
clubs and moot-courts, but can the most in- 
genious of them propose anything more fitted 
to tax subtlety in argumentation than the fol- 
lowing, which was defended three times in the 
negative in 1738, 1754, and 1759: "If Lazarus, 
by a will made before his death, had given away 
his property, could he have legally claimed it 
after his resurrection ? " Far easier is it to 
poke fun at this than to answer it in a way the 
Supreme Bench would sustain. 

Tough, hard-headed old fellows, then, were 
these ancestors of ours ; and the man of reflec- 



BIRD-BOLTS. 



tion who turns the pages of this pamphlet of 
Mr. Young, heartily as he at first may feel dis- 
posed to laugh, finds in the end that his pro- 
genitors were by no means such fools as he, in 
his nineteenth-century conceit, was inclined to 
take them for. If they had been, on what pos- 
sible datum of evolution could it be accounted 
for that they should have given birth to such 
superior descendants ? 



XL 

HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 

/^VH! the commentary on nine-tenths of the 
^- > ^ failures in human life that is offered in the 
besotted way in which an Irish servant girl so 
often sets to work to kindle a hard-coal fire! 
What clouds of smoke, what bloodshot and 
streaming eyes, how smutched and comical a 
visage through stanching the blinding tears 
with the knuckles of a sooty hand ! Only look 
at the unhappy creature, crouching on her 
knees and blowing till her lungs crack, or 
mournfully pausing, with a despairing howl, to 
contemplate the black and sullen miscarriage! 
Then see her go at the task once more, scoop- 
ing out with her fingers and heaping up on the 
hearth the hot and dirty contents of the grate, 
only that the whole process may be re-started 
with the same elaborate and foredoomed prep- 
arations for another failure. 

And yet, all the while, every rational being 



62 BIRD-BOLTS. 

cheered by a faith in evolution, rejoices in his 
heart that the bungler's face is blackened and 
her eyes stream ; ay, and that the fire will " go 
out on her " ! Will " go out on her " ? — of course 
it will. It would be dishonoring its Maker, if 
it disobeyed his beautiful laws to subject itself 
to the brainless obstinacy of such a mistress. 
Why, the very matches in the safe become fric- 
tionally excited and cry out, Shame ! " Look at 
us, Bridget," they seem to say; "just reflect on 
our secret, and become a rational being like one 
of us. A scratch on the wall sets our phos- 
phorus burning; phosphorus burning sets our 
sulphur on fire ; sulphur on fire sets our splints 
aflame. Rise, now, in ascending series from 
shavings to chips, from chips to dry pine, from 
dry pine to split oak, from split oak to anthra- 
cite, and soon will your fire leap and roar in 
exultation. Not a tiny spark but will clap its 
little hands and merrily sna]) out, ' Now you've 
hit it, Bridget.'" 

Kindling fires, of one kind or another, is a 
work with which all human beings have a great 
deal to do. Such expressions as getting up 
steam for one's work, setting others ablaze, 
kindling a genial glow of domestic love, are no 



HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 63 

mere metaphors. A veritable process of chemi- 
cal combustion lies as inevitably at the basis of 
a forcible speech or a warm embrace as at that 
of a hickory or anthracite fire. And, as every 
mass ignites the easiest at its most inflammable 
point, one would suppose that common-sense 
would dictate to all just where to begin. But 
it does not. 

Go into half the school-rooms of the land, 
and, lo ! Bridget at work once more abortively 
trying to kindle in the grate, anthracite at the 
bottom and shavings a-top, an intellectual fire. 
The most inflammable point in the mind of 
a child being his faculties of observation, and 
the good Lord having made it comparatively 
easy to set him all-in-a-flame over the beauty 
and vitality of the living objects in nature, 
the first thing here aimed at is to reverse the 
established order and insist on setting him 
aglow over the charms of barren abstractions. 
" The arithmetic lesson now, Johnny, my boy ! 
Remember, we do not wish you to have any- 
thing to do with three apples, three marbles, 
three birds. No matter at all about apples, 
marbles, and birds. The three alone, the three 
pure and naked, the three in absolute abstrac- 



64 BIRD-BOLTS. 

tion, this is the beautiful theme we yearn to- 
warm you up with ! Upon this rest the foun- 
dations of our fascinating science." Or it is a 
lesson in grammar. "Now Johnny, my boy, 
all your powers to the front ! The interesting, 
immaterial relations between nouns and verbs 
are to engage our thoughts. No matter about 
trout jumping at flies, or terrier snuffing at 
holes for rats. These were only the aboriginal 
barbaric methods adopted by savages for get- 
ting at the significance of nouns and verbs. 
You would we teach to breathe the rarer and 
more tonic air of pure abstractions." 

Of course, Johnny's abortively kindled fire 
soon begins to smoke. The little throat con- 
stricts with spasmodic grief and closes the dam- 
per, and out into the school-room pours the 
empyreumatic reek. There is an unhappy time 
all around, and remorseful or truculent Johnny 
is condemned as a stove that will not draw. 

Will not draw ! Look at the little urchin an 
hour later. He is watching his ingenious uncle 
taking a pump to pieces or mending the water- 
ram. He is visiting a ship with the aforesaid 
uncle. What a volley of questions now is the 
boy fusillading with all his musketry ! How 



HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 65 

all-of-a-tremble to know a sloop from a schooner, 
an hermaphrodite from a common brig, a barque 
from a ship ! 

But enough of the children. Are we adults 
handled any more rationally ? 

Flaming posters, for example, are conspicu- 
ously stuck up on every tree or board fence in 
the town in which we live, announcing the ad- 
vent of a peripatetic hygienic lecturer, with a 
mission to mankind. His subject, announced in 
huge block letters, is " Saleratus Bread, the Ruin 
it is working far and wide in the Republic !! !" 
Resolved to do our patriotic best, we invest a 
hard-earned quarter in a ticket, and take our 
seat on a bench of torture in the village hall. 
The subject to us is a new r one, but all we ask, 
to fire us to mount the red-cross in the new cru- 
sade, is, to put it in curt Saxon, to be logically 
and cumulatively enkindled in our intellectual 
and emotional departments. Meanwhile, the 
lecturer himself has had abundance of time to 
get the fires roaring in his own furnace and the 
water jumping in his boilers. To his Miltonic 
imagination, the country is a stranded ship fast 
racking to pieces, and the human race already 
nine-tenths annihilated through the worse than 
Asiatic plague of Saleratus Bread. 



BIRD-BOLTS. 



But, and here I enter my dogged and per- 
sonal protest, he has no more business to start 
me off at such a terrific rate, as he so often 
begins with, than has an engineer on a railway 
to fling me over the back of a seat, by letting 
loose his train at a speed of forty miles an hour. 
I claim a reserved right to have my inertia 
respected and to be allowed time to get gradu- 
ally into motion myself so as to keep up with 
the locomotive. Quite another matter would it 
be were I trying to hang back, a mere dead, con- 
servative, " unprogressive " weight. Just the 
contrary. I am anxious to be abreast with the 
very band in the funeral procession of the 
Republic. 

But, and here once again I enter my protest. 
I demand of the speaker that he shall kindle 
and inflame my imagination by due and succes- 
sive degrees. " Summon up, sir," I say to him 
courteously yet resolutely, " Summon up, sir, 
progressive pictures before my eyes of the 
women of Maine and New Hampshire, lank 
as herrings, and yellow as saffron, through the 
monotonous nature of their saleratus diet. Make 
me see the virulent chemicals actively eating 
holes in their teeth, and fast reducing their 



HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 67 

hapless proprietors to the scriptural condition 
in which ' the grinders shall cease because they 
are few.' Enable me, in sympathetic heart- 
burn, to feel how the indigestible iniquity is 
keeping alive its inflammatory action in their 
very vitals. Lead me along, solemn and slow, 
with the mournful train to the burial-ground, 
and then and there let me behold the maidens 
and mothers of these ill-starred States lowered 
into premature graves amid the sobs of their 
alkali-bereaved lovers and husbands and chil- 
dren. I am not a stone. I can weep as well 
as the next man. Prove to me, slowly, delib- 
erately, cumulatively, for I am a man whose 
passions wait on his judgment, that the most 
perfidious and diabolic of all the disguises of 
the arch-enemy in the nineteenth century is 
saleratus, and I'll do, — I don't know what I 
will not do!" 



XII. 
DREI-MAENNER-WEIK 

PHE customs of different countries are, after 
all, very much alike, endless variations, 
in fact, on a few as familiar tunes as " Hail 
Columbia" or "Home, Sweet Home." In the 
flrst flush of novelty, the traveller in foreign 
lands is forever imagining he has hit upon 
something absolutely new, but which a little sub- 
sequent reflection shows him to be nothing more 
startling than his old grandmother in a new cap. 

On the wing, it may be, through Germany, he 
lights upon a certain execrable kind of wine 
called " Drei-Maenner-Wein," or, "Three-Man- 
Wine," and, on investigating the origin of so 
extraordinary a title, he traces it back to the 
popular belief that it takes three men to drink 
the article, the first to serve as victim, the 
second to hold the victim fast, and the third 
to force the liquor down his throat. Of course 
the mind of no intelligent traveller is going to 



DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 69 

stop at this point. How did the wine ever 
come to be such execrable stuff? This, he 
learns, was the logical result of subjecting the 
grapes, after the last drop of legitimate juice 
had been forced out of them, to a dousing with 
water and an extra squeeze of the press so 
stringent as to start out of the very skins and 
stones their last principle of pucker y acridity. 

" Extraordinary people, these Germans ! " the 
traveller exclaims ; " first, that they should man- 
ufacture such an article at all and call it wine; 
second, that there should be any sort of demand 
for it." 

Sitting down on a stone at the base of a 
ruined castle to ruminate the marvel, tender 
memories of home come stealing over him un- 
awares, till, through the silent working of that 
miraculous principle of identity, which, in its 
highest reaches, enables a Newton to see, m the 
thud of an apple to the earth, the fall ot a 
planet toward the sun, he suddenly starts to Iris 
feet and breaks out: "Why, what is this, after 
all, but the dear, old home phenomenon of 
' Deacon's cider,' that familiar, up-country arti- 
cle begotten of soaking with water the apple 
pomace out of which every drop of legitimate 



70 BIRD-BOLTS. 

juice has been extracted, and then starting the 
blind old horse to wind up such a Titanic squeeze 
of the press that skin and seed have to yield up 
their last reserved rights of pucker and tang." 
Forthwith the traveller is no more an alien in 
a foreign land, but feels his heart-strings thrilled 
with that " one touch of nature that makes the 
whole world kin." 

Instead of journeying abroad to find wonders, 
and crying " Eureka ! " over them, as Dr. John- 
son says Goldsmith would have done, had he 
been set down in Constantinople and there have 
encountered a man trundling a wheelbarrow, 
would it not be better first to look about one a 
little at home ? Probably there is no portion of 
the world where, in one form or another, the 
demand for an article tantamount to " Deacon's 
cider," or " Drei-Maenner-Wein," is so steady as 
in New England. Only here, not merely grapes 
and apples, but singers, preachers, editors, au- 
thors, yes, and husbands, wives, and children, are 
turned into the press, while the blind old horse 
of the public goes round and round, winding up 
a pressure of the screw that grimly means that 
the last possible extract of headache, dyspepsia, 
and nerve-waste shall be run into the vat of 
newspaper, pulpit, and magazine. 



DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 71 

The story is told that when, some ten years 
ago, the famous French Dominican preacher, 
Father Hyacinthe, was in America, he felt a 
strong desire to have a talk with Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher on the mysteries of their mutual 
calling. Owing to a little difficulty, however 
that had occurred some considerable time befor 
in the construction of the Tower of Babel, nei- 
ther one of the eminent divines could under- 
stand a word the other said. So a woman of 
great accomplishment, born and bred in France 
but long resident in America, volunteered to 
mediate between them as interpreter. 

Among other things, the lady was afterward 
accustomed to report of the conversation, was 
her vivid sense of the horror expressed by 
Father Hyacinthe when he came to learn the 
quantity of preaching, exhorting, lecturing, etc., 
done by Mr. Beecher. " I prepare a course of 
twelve sermons a year," the famous Dominican 
went on to say. "These I deliver in two or 
three churches, after which I retire again to the 
monastery to study, meditate, and pray till the 
fountains are once more filled. It is wicked in 
the public to make such a demand on you, Mr. 
Beecher. It affects me with as much horror as 



72 BIRD-BOLTS. 

though God had given to some woman a won- 
derful voice, and a mob kept shouting W her 
after every inspired flight, ' Sing it over agaw,' 
till the beautiful organ became cracked and thin 
beyond repair." Of course, the polished French- 
man was too courteous to make any allusion to 
" Deacon's cider," or " Drei-Maenner-Wein," and 
confined his remarks wholly to his antipathy at 
seeing the grapes of the divine spirit in man 
subjected to an after-pressure that could force 
out nothing but the products of material waste 
from the physical tabernacle in which they are 
enshrined. 

It is a saying worthy of the generous heart of 
Mr. Emerson, that 

" The fiend that man harries 
Is love of the best." 

Unquestionably this is true. Man wants the 
best, as the popular slang goes, " every time." 
But there is just where the evil lies, and through 
this insatiate desire he becomes an unwitting 
fiend himself. " Sing it over again," is his prac- 
tical cry to every nerve in his own body, and to 
every nerve in the body of his favorite preacher, 
soprano, or author. And the one reply of such 



DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 73 

tormented nerve is : "I will not and I cannot. 
The inspiration is gone out. All that is left 
is phosphates and carbonic acid. If you will 
still work the lever of the press, this is the sum 
total of what you will get." 



XIII. 

WHIPPING THE GODS. 

PO be able to thank God that one is "not 
as other men are " is unquestionably to 
many a great enhancement of the sweetness of 
prayer. How cold had been the devotions of 
the Pharisee in the impressive parable, but for 
the eye he was able to cast now and then on the 
disreputable publican, very properly too much 
ashamed of himself to hold up his head like a 
man before God ! And yet, spite of the best of 
efforts, how cruelly is the comfort of this kind 
of indulgence ever getting interfered with ! 

At the first start, few things would seem to 
cater more richly to the sense of spiritual supe- 
riority than reading about the religious customs 
of other ages and races. Look, for example, at 
those extraordinary Chinese, and the way they 
have of dealing with their gods in seasons of 
drought and flood. For a while, and until mat- 
ters get very bad, the curious creatures show 
their deities every mark of respect, making 



WHIPPING THE GODS. 75 

daily offerings to them of rice and incense. 
But when, at last, such devotion plainly does no 
good, and the drought increases, and the floods 
rise higher, then does it begin to be felt that 
resort must be had to more decisive measures. 
Religion shall either mean something or noth- 
ing. So, wrathfully are the sacred images 
dragged out into the public square, and then 
and there soundly whipped. With every lash, 
taunts and insults are added. "A pretty god, 
forsooth, who have had bushels of rice and 
pounds of frankincense bestowed on you, and 
here is the grain withering up or the fields a 
foot deep in water ! " 

Now, of course, as a devout Christian, the 
reader is duly shocked at all this, and asks in his 
humility, " Is it possible that the Chinaman and 
I belong to the same religious species?" The 
more he muses, the wider the abyss that opens 
up between himself and the benighted idolater, 
until, in a sudden flash of revelation, a Nathan 
stands before him, and a voice rings out, " Thou 
art the man! " 

"I am the man ? What, I, child of Christian- 
ity, heir of the science of the nineteenth century, 
I whip the gods?" Stoutly is he disposed to 



76 BIRD-BOLTS. 

dispute with the prophet his stern challenge, till 
he finds himself borne down upon with a perti- 
nacity of argument and instance that compels 
silence. " Whip my gods ? " he cries, " When 
and where? " "Every day of your life, in public 
and in private." " But I have no brute images 
to drag out and wreak myself on," he resolutely 
answers. " Nay, but you make images, and on 
them you vent no end of complaint and vexa- 
tion, at times, of wrath and cursing." " When 
and where, I demand once more." " Every day, 
when you couple ugly names with the heat and 
cold, and are at war with half the physical ordi- 
nations of life ; every day, when you brood in 
gloom that you have but one talent instead of 
ten, when you sullenly demand why you were 
ever put into such a world as this. Answer like 
a man, Why do you indulge in all this but to 
get relief, to wreak yourself on something, to 
hurt some one, — plainly and bluntly to put it, 
to make your god feel bad, to wake him, if you 
can, to a sense of the shame and wrong of serv- 
ing you after such a fashion. Now, whatever 
lofty names you bestow on such heroic mood, 
what does it all in reality amount to but to a 
puerile and silly whipping of the gods ? " 



XIV. 

THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 

A SHORT run out of the city, and a look at 
the painting of the villas that are going 
up on every side, proves at a glance that the 
most active and, perhaps, fanatic of the evan- 
gelists of to-day are the apostles of the gospel 
of color. Thirty years ago, all country houses 
were white ; fifteen ago, gray or brown ; now all 
the tints and dyes of the rainbow are let loose 
on roof, rafter, and wall. Startling sensations 
seem positively courted, and buildings stare out 
on every hand that affect the color-sense as vio- 
lently as hartshorn the nostrils or cayenne the 
tongue. 

Still, the new departure is one to be wel- 
comed. In its first revolutionary fury, it will 
have its fanatics, rampant as so many bulls in 
the Madrid arena when the matador waves the 
red flag ; but, like the bulls, such fanatics serve 
only to emphasize how powerful the energy 



78 BIRD-BOLTS. 

latent in color for exciting the emotional nature 
in man and in brute. Time and experience will 
teach how to regulate the dose of so active a 
stimulant. 

For two centuries, New England was color- 
starved. Its very blood became so blanched as 
hardly to suffice for a rosy blush or an emotional 
glow. True, the apples would ripen red and 
gold, the wild flowers spangle the grass with, 
purple and crimson, and the sunset exhaust the 
resources of the genius of God. But few paid 
attention to such idle spectacles. And color 
revenged itself on the neglect, refusing rich 
flush to the faces and warmth and radiance 
to the manners of those who so persistently 
resisted the incarnation of its glories in their 
veins. 

Eminently practical, however, is this same 
New England mind. Once let it master the 
essential bearings of the truth that outside color 
strikes in and tints and dyes the soul itself, that 
an inexhaustible fuel-supply of illumination, 
cheer, and glow lies stored away in Turkey 
curtains, bright wall-papers, Japanese flags and 
fans, geraniums and sun-flowers, and it will as 
thoroughly appreciate the worth of the new 



THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 79 

mines, now opening up, as were they of coal 
and bitumen. Only let not the new discoverers 
overwork them and bring on a glut in the 
aesthetic market. 

Here is a climate cold and snow-white for 
four months of the year, raw, gray, and for- 
bidding for three, — a climate telling chillingly 
and depressingly on the affections and emotional 
nature, while it whets to a razor-edge the per- 
ceptions and intellect. Nor is this mere idle 
fancy. Color and warmth are as palpably the 
atmosphere in which love is generated, as is sun- 
shine the realm m which roses bloom and distil 
their perfumes. The woman who yearns to 
keep glowing the affections of her husband, let 
her look to it that he shall frequently see her 
bathed in the rich pulsations of the sunshine 
streaming through a Turkey-red curtain. 

Curious is it to note, on a tramp through the 
mountains with a friend, the contrasted effect 
on their minds of a clear but colorless, and a 
rich and prismatic day. They are climbing- 
Mount Adams ; the sky is monotonously trans- 
parent, the most distant mountains stand out 
sharp and denned, while every nearer rock, tree, 
flower, is fairly obtrusive in its individuality. 



80 BIRD-BOLTS. 

What an utterly unsentimental couj)le, these 
bosom friends ! Listen to their talk: it is purely 
intellectual and observant. The geological 
structure of the mountains, the name of this 
peak or that far away, the distance of yonder 
village, the genus and species of such a wild- 
flower, — these are the subjects that engross 
them wholly. 

Watch this same pair of friends on another 
day,— a day of orchestral, symphonic color. 
They are lovers, they are poets. The fountains 
of emotion are broken up. Eyes gleam, cheeks 
glow, feeling and imagination are flowing. All 
the glory of God has descended to greet them. 
Look down into the purple-black abyss of that 
stupendous gulf ! Follow up the hues and tints, 
in their infinite gradations through crimson and 
lake, to the opal, to the sapphire of yonder 
opposite peak ! Oh, the resplendent burst of 
flaming gold on that flank of Washington, the 
entrancing paradise of the meadows and shining 
river of the Randolph Valley ! 

' ' In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought is not, in enjoyment it expires. 
No thanks they breathe, they proffer no request: 



THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 81 

Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
Their mind is a thanksgiving to the power 
That made it: it is blessedness and love! " 

Surely, it means something that all through 
the ages, from the rudest mythology of the 
savage to the supremest flights of a Dante or 
Milton, the soul of man has always been com- 
pelled to feel through color just as it thinks 
through light : that mountain-tops of opal, sap- 
phire, ruby, rivers of gold and silver, meadows 
of emerald green, angels of radiant face or iris- 
hued robe, have alone matched its yearnings in 
its visions of heaven; fiery flames, wide-rolling 
and devastating fires alone, in its visions of hell. 



XV. 

OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 

T N this clock-work world, action and reaction 
are forever equal. Nowhere does this Dra- 
conian law assert itself more inexorably than 
in the domain of property of every kind. Let 
a man own anything, — a cow, for example. 
How long before he discovers, in the most literal 
fashion, that the cow owns him equally, — his 
services at milking-time, his wages for a substi- 
tute in that matin and vesper libation, a lien on 
his income for supplies of hay and meal? The 
rope that has one end round her neck always 
contrives to noose the other end round his. 
Into the carpet or china store goes the wife, 
and feels how delightful to be mistress of those 
thick Turkey rugs and heavy woollen curtains, 
those vases, bubble-thin glasses, and like siren- 
shapes of exquisite fragility. How long, alas! 
before moths and Hibernian image-breakers 
begin to assert reactionary ownership over her 



OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 60 

time and temper ? Meanwhile, her husband, the 
merchant, has succumbed to the like fate, as 
the railroad and factory stocks he thought to 
own have humorously turned the tables on him, 
and own him, his leisure, digestion, sleep. 

If there is any class of teachers that needs to 
be listened to in this materialized age, it is the 
emancipators who, like Wordsworth and Tho- 
reau, consecrated themselves to the gospel of 
Plain Living and High Thinking. Here were 
the type who began life with going out into 
the wilderness and being tempted of the devil, 
whether they would yoke themselves into a 
cart and draw the mere muck of custom all 
their days, or live for some freedom and play 
of mind. Never men who recognized, with 
clearer head, that no one can own anything but 
that that same thing must likewise own him. 
So they made up their minds to do without 
a thousand possessions they saw demanding 
endless drudge-work and belittling care. But 
some things they would own. They would own 
nature. Very well, then nature must own them, 
— the glow of their hearts, the reverent study 
of their minds. These they gave, and the bond- 
age was perfect liberty. One other thing they 



84 BIRD-BOLTS. 

would own, — genuine, heartfelt, human associa- 
tion, not the mockery substitute of mere rounds 
of ceremonial calls. Very well, then their 
friends must own them, joy in their joy, tears 
for their tears, amplest hospitality of soul, if 
not turbot and champagne. Thus did the lives 
of these men become free, invigorating, and 
religious. 

Oh, the delicate irony of life, the laughing in 
the sleeve at poor rich-men of every stamp ! 
Here is an odd mortal who plumes himself on 
his library of five thousand selected volumes, 
-which, by the way, he omits to read. Along 
comes some poor student and borrows them of 
him, one by one. Out of them he tears the 
heart, sinews, and marrow. Which of the two 
really owns the books, — he of the legal title, or 
he whose mind has become enriched with the 
organ harmonies of Milton, the massive wisdom 
of Burke, the marvel-world of Shakspere? 

Surely, it is a serious matter, this getting 
laughed..- at in so sly and ironical a fashion. If 
the great Soame Jenyns may be trusted, the 
angels in heaven are kept in perpetual play 
of- humor through "their addiction to thus mak- 
ing merry over the pranks of mortals. Might 



OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 8o 

it not therefore prove a dignified counter-stroke 
against such celestial risibilities, for men, once 
in a while, to take deliberate account of all they 
suppose is theirs. Come, now, you say you 
own, or, if you prefer the word, possess a supe- 
rior wife. Well, how much of her do you own, 
— her thorough-going confidence, her pride in 
your chivalrous devotion, her finest sensibility 
for nature, literature, religion, or merely her 
services as upper housekeeper? If the last 
only, then all the outside world, capable of finer 
appreciation, owns an hundred-fold deeper in 
her gifts and graces than you. Is not this, after 
all, the worst kind of practical divorce? Mar- 
ried, and yet not married ! So near, and yet so 
far! 

You think, in yet farther summary of your 
goods, you can name, say, a family of children. 
Well, out with it honestly ! how much do you 
own in them, — their joyousness, their radiant 
trust in you, the blessed relationship of guide 
to their opening intelligence and character, or 
merely the privilege of keeping them in clothes 
and shoes ? If the latter alone, then every in- 
spiring teacher they have owns in them a thou- 
sand-fold more ; nay, every chance passer-by 



$6 BIRD-BOLTS. 

who stops to God bless them, as they coast 
merrily down the hillside, and renew in him a 
sympathetic thrill with their spring-time of life. 
Ah ! real ownership goes very deep and high. 
Even the law allows a man, in his land, every- 
thing from the surface to the zenith. 



XVI. 

-THE MAXIM OF WAR." 

T T was Napoleon's famous maxim that the 
whole art of war consisted in knowing how 
to concentrate a heavier mass at a given point 
than the enemy could bring to bear. No matter 
though the whole opposing army outnumber 
yours ten to one, if you can outnumber it two 
to one, where the actual struggle is made, there 
you are the victor. The three hundred at Ther- 
mopylae kept back the whole Persian host, for 
the simple reason that in the narrow defile the 
whole Persian host could not get at them all at 
once, and the Greeks were better men than those 
that could, fast and frequent as they came on. 

All successful warfare is conducted on this 
principle. Little children get at the pith of the 
maxim by a sort of diabolic instinct, and, with 
it, contrive to rout their parents, horse and foot. 
Not that the fathers and mothers are not the 
stronger and wiser of the two, but that the 



88 BIRD-BOLTS. 

children know how to concentrate at a given 
point a hideous intensity of yell, or to set on an 
epileptic convulsion of sobs and tears, that no 
slow-moving forces of judgment can be massed 
in time to resist. Later on, the parents see 
their military mistake. So do most generals 
after they have lost the day. But it is then too 
late to try the thing over again. 

Lightning-rod agents are resplendent illustra- 
tions of the power of this same principle. Give 
them ten minutes, and they can mass and pre- 
cipitate on the imagination such a frightful com- 
bination of rolling thunders, blinding flashes, 
shattered houses, and wives and children cal- 
cined to ashes, that the wariest old householder, 
who holds latent in the background of his mind, 
like the Dutchman's anchor, the indubitable 
fact that there has not been a building struck 
in the village for ten years, comes suddenly to 
think that the habitual atmospheric condition is 
a mixture of rafters, women, children, and wrath 
to come. To this he succumbs. When the bill 
is presented, he wishes he had not. But it is 
then too late. The lightning-rod man is off for 
" fresh fields and pastures new." 

Every outlook on the world that permits it 



"THE MAXIM OF WAR." 89 

to mass the entire army of its perils, diseases, 
wrongs, and sorrows, and to bring them to bear 
all at once on the imagination, is sure to entail 
panic and defeat. Such an outlook is as false 
as the visions of a nightmare. It is with the 
will of man in the great battle of life as it is 
with an Atlantic steamship in her battle with 
the ocean. Grand an embodiment of power as 
is the steamship, still what is she to the ele- 
mental forces of the ocean she defies? No 
more than the first faint sigh of an infant to 
a tropical hurricane. No more than the trem- 
bling of a leaf to the shock of an earthquake. 
Think of the Atlantic or the Pacific at its 
year-long work, battering down cliffs of trap 
and granite, grinding vast rock-masses to finest 
sand, rolling up enormous bars to dam in an 
Amazon or a Ganges. Can the little steamer 
throw down her gauntlet to this Titanic Conti- 
nent-Leveller ? Can her petty thousand-horse 
power think to take issue with this pandemo- 
nium of dragon and demon power ? No ! not 
for a moment. She will never be called upon to 
do it. Napoleon-like, she needs only to hold 
fast the grand maxim of the whole art of war, 
and to be the stronger of the two at the actual 



90 BIRD-BOLTS. 

point of attack. True, the ocean is mighty, but 
then it is vast and outspread. True, the power 
of gales is terrific, but then they are howling all 
abroad over the wide surface of the deep. Not 
a tithe, not a millionth part of their combined 
might can be brought to bear on a single point. 
Look now at the steamship. She is all at hand 
upon the spot, "a fiery mass of living valor." 
Let the battering ram of the waves do its worst, 
she is a battering- ram too, that can strike still 
heavier blows. The particles of the waves do 
not cohere, but hers do with iron tenacity. The 
waves are brutal and awkward in the blows 
they strike ; she, in her very build, is like the 
ward of a skilful boxer, parrying the strokes of 
a giant clown. Then peer into the white-hot 
heart of her furnaces, and see how she is aglow 
to the core with passion. Feel sympathetically 
the Titan heave of the steam as it shoulders 
round the enormous shafts. Ton for ton, blow 
for blow, the steamship is the heavier mass, the 
fiercer momentum at the point of attack, and so 
she wins the day. 

No man ever crossed the Atlantic without 
sharing at times a feeling of the sublime sym- 
bolism of this scene. How poor mortality 



" THE MAXIM OF WAR." 91 

trembles in affright as it looks off over the 
great elemental sea of human life. What help- 
less atoms men seem! It is no fair contest, 
they cry, pitting us manikins against such brutal, 
blind, and overwhelming forces. How shall we 
hold our bodies' health against these malarias, 
chills, heats, this fever of work, this rack of 
care ? How shall we keep our souls' health in 
this wild sea of temptation and allurement? 
Let the stanch little steamship impart its simple 
secret. No man is called on to fight this whole 
" sea of troubles " all at once. It cannot all, it 
cannot a thousandth part of it, get at him in 
a given hour in any other way but through the 
falsifying imagination that summons it up in a 
flash. 

"Had I known what was before me in my 
work of reform," said Luther, " ten horses would 
never have dragged me into it." But this was 
retrospect. This was the expression of a mo- 
ment when all the toils and woes of forty years 
were focused in imagination upon the feeble 
will-power of the present hour. He did get 
through with his work, nevertheless, and heroic- 
ally. All that is demanded for victory is that a 
man be a match for what assails him at the 



92 BIRD-BOLTS. 

actual point of attack, that, steamship-like, he 
shoulder the immediate wave out of the way 
and then press on for the next one. The vast 
mass of the storm can but howl impotently in 
the offing. Let him fight one acre of ocean at a 
time. If king within that space, he is king all 
the way across the broad Atlantic. 



XVII. 

PERFUME AND AROMA. 

T N the chemical analysis of delicate wines, de- 
licious fruits, fragrant flowers, it is found 
that the peculiar volatile essences that impart to 
them the aroma of their perfume and the ex- 
quisiteness of their flavors, are almost infinitesi- 
mally minute in quantity. Compared with the 
mere* bulk of the water, the carbon, the mineral 
salts that are the main constituents of poet- 
chanted lily or grape, alike as of homely potato- 
blossom or beet, these more* refined and subli- 
mated distillations of nature are scarcely appre- 
ciable in weight. And yet it is precisely the 
presence and diffusion of such ethereal essences 
in and through the grosser mass that lift up 
the rarest products of nature and art into a 
class by themselves and make them so coveted 
by man. Leave these rare distillations out, and 
it would be as though some malignant fairy had 
suddenly transformed a luscious melon into a 



94 BIRD-BOLTS. 

eommon marrow, a fragrant peach into a coarse 
turnip. 

It is a dangerous thing, then, underrating 
minute and delicate spiritualities of essence and 
judging by gross bulk of quantity. That mirac- 
ulous natu^k environing man would teach him a 
far different lesson, were he but devout and 
responsive enough to give ear to her subtler 
teachings. Finger on lip, and in hushed, ador-. 
ing whisper, would she bid him note how the 
more than Apocalyptic vision he is beholding in 
the sunset-transfiguration of earth and sky, as 
they mirror themselves in the tranquil lake, 
reflecting the crystal dome of the heavens, the 
burning clouds, the aerial mountains, and near- 
overhanging trees and grasses, turns — the whole 
possibility of the revelation — but on the pres- 
ence or the absence of the faintest breath of air. 
And yet, perhaps at the very moment, and as 
he stands lost in the glory and the dream, there 
breaks in upon him one he so devoutly wishes 
could but learn the secret of nature. Alas ! the 
man mirrors nothing, he has no repose of being 
on whose hushed and tranquil plane the harmo- 
nious unity of life's reflections can glass them- 
selves; on his surface is perpetual agitation, 



PERFUME AND AROMA. 95 

breaking into jangled bits the noble outlines of 
the mountains, the color-symphony of the sun- 
set, the gracious curves of the overhanging 
trees. Only a little, a very little breeze is it 
that is perpetually setting on his jigging wave- 
lets. But it is enough : they spoil everything. 

The most priceless dower Christianity con- 
ferred on the world lay in the spirit of more 
delicate appreciation it communicated of what 
might be called the rarer and more sublimated 
aromas of life. In the highest sense of the 
word, — ■ and as the very breathing of the celes- 
tial genius of its Founder, — it was the religion 
of that realm in the soul in which poetry and 
sentiment are the primal conditions of happy 
being. Cradled in poverty, it yet — and that, 
too, in a very literal sense — seemed even to feel 
it could get along without necessaries if only it 
had luxuries. It revelled in feeling. It cared 
more for the sympathetic tone of voice in which 
a kindly act was done than for the material 
content of the act. It loved the cordial grasp, 
the sunny smile, more even than the proffered 
clothing or food. 

Need it be asked what, in the mill-round of 
this work-day world, it is that most surely stirs 



BIRD-BOLTS. 



the heart of man, woman, or child to conscious 
love and gratitude ? Evermore that which quick- 
ens to life the frayed and jaded nerves and 
thrills through the soul the luxury of a smile, a 
tear, a cry of admiration, a sweet solace of 
peace ! This is it which in all ages has made 
the poet, the humorist, the eloquent preacher, 
the son of consolation, so dear to the hearts of 
his fellows. To feel themselves living souls and 
not mere machines, to have rich chords of 
music struck out of their resonant strings, herein 
lies the deepest yearning in human beings. And 
precisely here is touched the living reason why 
the jDoorest of the poor so often love far more 
heartily the man or woman who exchanges 
the simple greetings of the day with them after 
a cheery, human-hearted fashion, lingers admir- 
ingly over their one rose-bush in the yard, or 
tosses and gives a kiss to their crowing baby, 
than they do the one who, in a reserved and 
unemotional way, has left them an order for a 
warm coat or a ton of coah 



XVIII. 

LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 

IV/TANY a pedestrian journey among the 
White Mountains, promising no end of 
exhilaration and delight, has been brought to 
grief through the simple fact of its being under- 
taken by* a short-legged man in the company of 
a long-legged one. Vast aspiration of soul may 
no doubt go with diminutive stride of limb, but, 
none the less, aspiration means little more than 
perspiration, unless backed by the requisite phys- 
ical quality. The pace kills, and instead of sur- 
plus spirits with which to enjoy the fine scenery 
and bubble over in all manner of pleasant talk, 
the poor, broken-winded lagger has no other 
sense but of aching muscles and panting lungs. 
A few days of unremitting strain, and the 
iron has entered into his soul. He begins to 
hate long-legged men. They take on the guise 
of oppressors and tyrants who go through the v 
world ruthlessly trampling down all capacity of 



98 BIRD-BOLTS. 

enjoyment in others, and this simply that they 
themselves may revel in the brutal satisfaction 
of showing off the merits of their own seven- 
league boots. 

A great deal of shallow discussion has been 
indulged in as to why it is that really great and 
good men are so often hated in their day and 
generation. To account for the fact, all sorts 
of calumnies have been vented against human 
nature. But a large part of these are sheer ab- 
surdities. Great men get themselves hated on 
the pedestrian journey of life upon precisely the 
same principle as long-legged men on the walk 
through the White Mountains. They swing 
along at so terrific a pace that well-nigh every 
one who attempts to follow them in mathematics, 
logic, reform, religion, finds himself blown and 
full of misery. To them, with their seven-league 
boots of intellect, imagination, conscience, and 
courage, the gait at which they travel seems 
merely a fine exhilaration. 

Of the very essence of great men, moreover, 
is it that, through the magnetic quality of their 
natures, they unconsciously inflame the feebler 
to a cruel degree of strain. With the best of 
possible intentions, they load down average 



LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 99 

humanity with a burden under which it reels 
and faints, and then cry, « Start off with it now 
across country: leap fences, jump ditches! 
Glorious, is it not ? " No ; it is not glorious to 
the cart-horse to try it neck and neck with the 
racer. Just this experience was it through 
which sweet, devout, and faithful Philip Me- 
lanchthon came finally to regard the nation- 
shaking Luther as such nightmare oppression to 
his own soul, and would, had he confessed the 
truth, have been so glad to preach his funeral 
sermon' All praise and glory to the Luthesi 
His spirit renovated Europe. But a word of 
pity and justice for the Melanchthon likewise. 
It did him no good, it often broke and hurt him 
to be galvanized night and day by a battery go 
powerful as to paralyze instead of invigorate 
his less vigorous faculties. 

Entirely apart, however, from the question of 
great men and little, all through life is witnessed 
the spectacle of the oppressive and often piteous 
tyranny unconsciously exercised by strong over 
weak natures. What more terrible ip a small 
way, for example, than to behold one of those 
men or women of an elastic, buoyant tempera- 
ment, who sheds all troubles as a duck's back 



100 BIRD-BOLTS. 

sheds water, let loose, to comfort him, on some 
fellow-creature of a despondent make-up, who 
has met a severe misfortune ? Nature creates 
types of such exuberant vitality in their way of 
taking all manner of blights and evils, that one 
is forced to look in vain through the whole 
realm of animal or vegetable existence for any- 
thing to parallel them with, till, in an hour of 
inspiration, he bethinks himself of an asparagus 
bed. Lay them low, every green shoot, this 
morning, and they are all up again and erect 
as soldiers on the morrow. They positively 
thrive on cutting down. a Bring on your 
knives," they exultingly cry; "we like it! 
Let's see which will come out ahead ! " 

All honor to the lusty asparagus ! Who but 
admires such vigor and pluck. But when, in- 
stead of giving thanks for the especial grace 
that is bestowed on it, it goes forth on a dog- 
matic mission, and insists that all peas and 
beans, yea, and corn, tomatoes, and the whole 
vegetable world, could do just the same, if they 
only had a mind to, aye, and are wicked, cow- 
ardly, and corrupt for not doing so, then surely 
may a modest demurrer be put in. And yet 
this is precisely the way in which so many a 



LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 101 

widow, who has survived three husbands and 
come up fresh and smiling for a fourth, thinks 
to draw nigh and breathe comfort into the 
heart of a poor broken-hearted sister who feels 
she has buried her all with her one. So much 
comfort cannot be taken at once. 

The drift of all this is not of course that the 
highly endowed sons and daughters of earth, 
overflowing with health, intellect, courage, and 
faith, should be abolished for the benefit of the 
feebler ones. Surely there is a way in which 
such natures ought to inure to the benefit of all. 
But the only method through which they can 
really do this is by some heed being paid to the 
doctrine 'of degrees,. In literature, the Dantes, 
Shaksperes, Miltons, and Goethes are for those, 
and those only, akin, in some small measure at 
least, to a like range of intellect and flight 
of imagination. To set out to force prema- 
turely on ordinary minds these Olympians is 
simply to breed a miserable sense that all at- 
tempt at enjoying literature means exhaustion 
and despair, is only to make these giants the 
scourge and oppression of minds that might be 
awakened to a measure of intellectual life under 
a stimulus better adapted to their feebler powers. 



XIX. 

VICIOUS VIRTUES. 

'T > HE world at large entertains too contracted 
notions on the subject of self-indulgence. 
Speak of this vice, and away flies the mind 
forthwith to a few stock cases of the people who 
are given to over-eating, over-smoking, over- 
drinking. This will never do. All mankind 
tend to self-indulgence. It was the sage remark 
of an observant teacher, who had received into 
his boarding-school the son of one of the noblest 
men of the land : " The boy has been nine- 
tenths ruined by the exalted self-sacrifice of his 
father. It has made of the fellow nothing but a 
horse-leech of selfishness." In point of fact, the 
father had utterly over-indulged in the pleasure 
his benevolent nature took in doing for others; 
and no rational progress will ever be made in 
public opinion till excesses like these are openly 
exposed in the same pillory with surfeits in food 
and bouts in drink. 



VICIOUS VIRTUES. 103 

The simple truth is that human nature takes 
a wild delight in exercising its strongest powers. 
One man's vitality lies in his vigorous senses, 
another's in his energetic brain, another's in his 
impulsive heart. Give him something to do in 
any one of these special ways, and he is on the 
alert in a moment. Summon him, on the con- 
trary, to anything that puts bit and bridle on 
them, and he is as fretted as a race-horse yoked 
to a plough. 

Perhaps in no one direction does a more mis- 
chievous mania set in than among the class who 
are always on a craze to sacrifice themselves for 
others, and that for the very reason that the 
thing they are doing seems so generous and 
self-forgetful. The number is legion, who fairly 
revel in the extremest self-indulgence in self- 
sacrifice, too dead in earnest so much as to smile 
at the odd contradiction. Sometimes, it is a 
teacher so importunate to put himself to every 
conceivable trouble to save his pupil the pain of 
personal effort that he is working the boy as 
positive harm as though he were to hamstring 
him. Sometimes, it is a mother, with whom self- 
sacrifice has grown to be so delirious a passion 
that she actually glories in being as thin as a 



104 BIRD-BOLTS. 

rail and tired as a cab-horse in the consecrated 
work of sparing her daughters the necessity of 
doing a thing that will save them from becom- 
ing the burden and plague of the men who, 
some day, will have the misfortune to marry 
them. 

It is a serious question how many victims 
self-abandoned devotees have a right to immo- 
late to their own mere pleasure. Has not the 
innocent school-boy a modest claim not to be 
hamstrung at so early a stage in life ? Has not 
the girl, who eventually will be forced to bake 
bread and sweep a room, some plea for a rem- 
nant of muscle and knowledge to do it with? 
Suppose the teacher has had a happy time of 
it; suppose the mother is as thin as a rail, or 
thinner even. Cannot too high a price be paid 
for individual luxuries ? 

The fact is, in nine-tenths of these cases, all 
that is witnessed by those who are lauding such 
examples is as thorough a prostration of ra- 
tional self-control beneath a blind passion as 
may be fallen in with at the counter of any bar- 
room, at which the old stand-bys appear from 
hour to hour to take their drams. The one set 
have become dependent upon an alcoholic, the 



VICIOUS VIRTUES. 105 

other upon a self-sacrificing tipple ; and it is an 
even question which class of the two is doing 
most harm to their families by unresisted indul- 
gence in evil habit. 

Of course, all victims of chronic intemperance 
are to be pitied. Hard, hard is it to prevail on 
them to reform. But could not a society be in- 
augurated, with banners and white satin badges, 
if need be, whose mission it should be to prevail 
on, say, some of these mothers, too far gone for 
self-help, to suffer themselves to be tied up, 
for an hour at a time daily, to a bed-post, where 
it would be impossible for them to get at a 
broom, a duster, or a pair of scissors, and then 
and there struggle to look on in self-control, 
while their daughters try whether they cannot 
do some little thing to help themselves ? True, 
the position would be one of agony. But recov- 
ery from enthralling habit is always agony. So 
it is from opium, so from tobacco, so from 
whiskey. Why should self-sacrifice be the only 
exception ? With so much at stake for the wel- 
fare of others, would not an effort at abstinence 
from a rootedly selfish indulgence be worth the 
price demanded ? 



XX. 

THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 

PHE day has come when no weak shrinking 
from the infliction of pain ought longer 
to hold back the press and pulpit from sounding 
a note of warning against a danger more threat- 
ening to the highest interests of society than 
fusion frauds in Maine or "bulldozing" in the 
South. Grave as are these latter evils, there 
goes with them, at least, a degree of cunning, 
resolution, and brazen effrontery that serves to 
sharpen the wits and develop the muscle of the 
young republic ; and as long as the State pre- 
serves its virility, even though such virility work 
itself off in drinking bouts and desperate fight- 
ing, there is still hope. 

In the item of poodles, however, and the immi- 
nent peril with which they menace all that is 
softest in the heart and weakest in the brain of 
women, no such mitigating plea can be urged. 
On every hand is the evil spreading, till already 
is there witnessed a vii'tual immolation of the 



THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 107 

affections and intellect of thousands of the sex 
on the idolatrous shrine of six-ounce, rheumy- 
eyed, rag bundles of microscopic dogs. 

It is a momentous epoch in every life when 
the hour comes to it to decide to what object it 
will consecrate the strongest energies and finest 
sensibilities* of the being. And, therefore, is it 
perhaps not to be wondered at that so many a 
young woman stands in long hesitation on the 
brink between the Church and a six-ounce dog- 
ling. Say what one will in behalf of the Church, 
is not the poodle, like the poor, always with 
one ? Will not wicked fleas ravage his sensitive 
skin, unless tender hands offer their ministries 
to soap him and dry him off, and comb out his 
silken hair? In his unredeemed nature, will he 
not take to gnawing bones in a gutter, unless a 
more delicate instinct be developed in him for 
coffee and French rolls in the morning and 
breast of chicken at dinner? Nay, and then, 
too, his pathetic shapes of illness, teething, 
mange, fits: what heart could cruelly abandon 
him untended, uncaressed, to these ? Once more, 
then, no wonder that, against the combined 
strength of such a plea, the Church so often fails 
to carry the day. 



108 BIRD-BOLTS. 

The first and foremost ill effect of this idol- 
atry is witnessed more in the brain of the dev- 
otee than even in the fits of the dog. At a 
glance are detected the signs of cerebral soften- 
ing, as a silly, doting expression usurps the place 
of the former lines of broader and more rational 
affection. Not so does a woman look who is 
beaming love on a child or rapture on a brave 
young fellow. 

Alas for poor Psyche Skye or Beatrice Black- 
and-Tan ! she has no intellect. An inarticulate 
lingo, and that of the most idiotic type, is all 
that can be indulged in with her in the most 
soul-subduing hour. The brain must be con- 
tracted to the nutshell of her diminutive com- 
pass. True, it may be urged in compensation, 
she still appeals to the tenderest sensibilities. 
Do not her weak eyes run, and the wicked fleas 
bite her? Does she not go off into pathetic 
convulsions in her fits? Yes, no doubt; but, 
still, intellect and affection must work together 
to evolve a perfect woman. To be mated with 
what summons out no energy nor range of 
thought is infallibly to degenerate. Alas ! the 
logic of the consecrated life is stern and iron- 
linked. The mistress must immolate her own 



THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 109 

intellect on the shrine of her poodle. Then 
alone will the last obstacle be removed to the 
perfect oneness of the union, and the tender 
sensibilities well up in maudlin gush. 

Touching, indeed, though unconvincing, is it 
on one's summer travels to witness the devotion 
to which these' exquisitely developed sensibilities 
will prompt. Not a stage that arrives at the 
Glen House or at Crawford's but at least one 
agonized woman emerges from it in terror as to 
the effect the bracing mountain air will exert on 
her poodle or black-and-tan. She must have a 
room with a south exposure and a fireplace. 
All day must she sit on the piazza, with her back 
to the scenery, and keep watch lest some large 
and brutal dog should suddenly swallow Psyche 
whole. To breakfast and to dinner must she 
carry the dainty dear, and feed it with her own 
fork, and wipe its little muzzle with her napkin, 
though hard-hearted and callous j^eople are im- 
precating all around her. "It's a harsh and 
cruel world we live in, isn't it, Psyche, sweet ? ' 
she croons in tender comfort to the nervously 
trembling mite. And thus are witnessed m her 
the last stages of a growing type of imbecility, 
which, unless stern measures are taken to repress 



110 BIRD-BOLTS. 

it, is inevitably bound to destroy the republic in 
the persons of the coming wives and mothers 
of the land. The day for temporizing is gone. 
Man must fight for dear life for his hold on the 
heart and head of woman. A rival has stepped 
into the field, with whom it will no longer do 
to trifle. 

Is it to be wondered at, then, that so many 
a thorn-pierced and writhing reformer finds it 
harder and harder to stand by and hold his 
peace ? Bear his testimony he must. Else will 
the very stones cry out. Aye, and often, when 
his heart is hot within him, does he wish they 
only would, and that, too, with a troop of brutal 
school-boys to emphasize the cry, and, in the 
distance, a vista of wildly scattering poodles and 
black-and-tans fleeing the wrath to come. 



XXI. 

THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 

PHE mariner's compass would no doubt be a 
far more satisfactory guide to sail a ship 
by, if it were not such a fly-away, tricksy kind 
of spirit. And yet the well-known attempt of 
the Dutch navigator to keep it steady by driv- 
ing a nail through it did not turn out a real 
improvement. In fact, the extreme sensibility 
of the compass to impressions, precisely as the 
like with genius in poet or musician, is the one 
thing that makes it valuable. All that can be 
wisely done, therefore, is to study and allow for 
its habits of eccentricity, to construct tables of 
its variations, and to note carefully what effect 
is exerted on it by the proximity of any iron on 
board the ship itself. Such j)erturbations taken 
into account, the needle proves an invaluable 
monitor. 

Those tremulous, sensitive, magnetic needles, 
— heart, intellect, conscience, imagination, — 



112 BIRD-BOLTS. 

with which man undertakes to steer his course in 
life, do they not lie equally exposed to all manner 
of deceptive perturbations? How long, for ex- 
ample, can any thoughtful married couple live 
together without finding they have compasses 
on hoard of differing variations, and that thus, 
while each thinks to be sailing on exactly the 
same course and steering for precisely the same 
port, they are in reality often opening up so 
diverging an angle between their tracks that, 
at this rate, the one will arrive out in Liverpool, 
while the other drops anchor way south in 
Gibraltar ? 

As an absolute preliminary, therefore, toward 
keeping within hailing distance of one another, 
they rationally set to work to compare com- 
passes, and by degrees learn to construct prac- 
tical working tables as to how many points of 
variation must be allowed for Mary's constitu- 
tional susceptibility to extravagance or volu- 
bility, and how many for John's equal tendency 
toward an over-despondent or over-captious 
view of things. And so, by degrees, they come 
to be of real service to one another, — better 
than angels, loyal ship-mates on the great 
voyage of life, — as many a wry-steering hus- 



THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 113 

band is forced to acknowledge, when too long 
separated from his wife and left to his own 
uncorrected compass; and many a wry-steering 
wife, to hers. * 

No such signal mark ol the difference between 
a rational and an irrational being can be in- 
stanced as the degree in which either one of 
them recognizes and acts upon the truth, that 
men see not with the eye, but with the mind 
behind the eye, and that the state of the mind — 
whether, for example, depressed or sanguine — 
exercises as palpable an influence over what is 
seen as the medium of panes of blue or red glass 
over the landscape, turning in the one instance 
a glowing July mid-day into a dreary winter of 
snow, and, in the other, setting forest and sky 
on fire. And yet it is doubtful whether the 
most reflective heads begin to estimate the 
distorting or harmonizing effect wrought over 
external objects by varying moods and passions 
or degrees of cultivation. Nay, these imperfect 
mental lenses do more than simply distort : they 
actually shut out from the field of vision whole 
ranges of real objects. 

You know and I know certain men and women 
at the approach of whom we always hide the 



114 BIRD-BOLTS. 

deepest, sweetest, and most eloquent side of our 
being as instinctively as we would our purse in 
the presence of a pickpocket. And this for the 
same reason that geranium leaves shrivel up 
before the cold. Such persons are icy, cynical, 
selfish. What is best in you is tempted out by 
no atmosphere of sympathy, but forthwith im- 
pelled to shut tight its calyx ; and so, as far as 
you are personally involved, the man of that 
class never knows you. He knows your name, 
the clothes you wear, your views on the weather. 
And what holds good of your own instinctive 
action holds equally of that of all like you. 
" Here comes the frost," they say : " we must 
cover over our salvias, heliotropes, and mignon- 
ettes. All that it will do to expose to him is 
flower-pots bottom upwards ! " And so the man 
comes habitually to behold nothing but the same 
monotonous pottery aspect of the varied flower- 
gardens of the world, as would, were they 
equally conscious, the June and September visi- 
tations of frost. No wonder he is confirmed in 
his icy view, — nay, that he will argue contempt- 
uously against all this sentimental talk about 
heliotropes and mignonettes, and declare that 
he wants no better witness than his own eyes ; 



. THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 115 

never suspecting that all his eyes are really 
revealing — and even that not to him, but to 
somebody else — is that the most delicate and 
fragrant flowers always fly to covert when frost 
is around, and yet are meanwhile only waiting 
till the chill spectre shall depart, to fling abroad 
for the delight of others the gold and purple of 
the sunbeam. Alas ! poor man, his cynicism has 
done more than to distort objects to his eye. It 
has annihilated them for him. 

It is a common objection, urged from certain 
quarters against a devout and thankful religious 
spirit, that it has no foundation to rest on, apart 
from the personal feeling of the man who shares 
it. It is but a beautiful rainbow projected 
from the fanciful mind upon a cloud-bank, but 
a sunset pomp flung abroad over the barren or 
snow-crowned mountain-top. Closely inspect 
the cloud-bank, and it is dark, chilly mist; the 
mountain-top, and it is barren rock or ice. Re- 
ligion and the God of religion are thus, in the 
last analysis, but ideal creations of the mind, 
objects projected solely out of human love, 
yearning, and imagination. Thus is the matter 
argued. 

Is it not about time that every sane mind 



116 BIRD-BOLTS. 

should cease allowing itself to be beclouded and 
distressed by such shallow and miserable stuff: 
as this? As though the mind behind the eye 
did not always determine what we shall see and 
in what light and color ! What single thing in 
the wide compass of nature that is not made up, 
for all it ever is to us, out of elements it evokes 
to life from the depths of our own minds ? Fire 
has no vital existence to us but through the 
response awakened in us by its genial glow, its 
beauty, its dancing lights on wall and picture, 
and the enkindled faces of wife and child. The 
man who knows most about fire is simply the 
one who creates the splendor and glory of its 
blaze out of the freest inward incandescence 
of ecstasy of feeling, poetic marvel, Rembrandt- 
like delight in light and shade and color. 

And yet, in the face and eyes of all this, 
some red-faced, lager-beer cask of a material- 
istic nouter will tell you, in supreme assumption, 
that he knows what an oyster is, but does not 
know your fancied God. Very likely ; but then 
he knows his oyster on precisely the same terms 
as the saint his God, — that is, by the inter- 
pretation of his own inner experience. Why, 
the fellow is a stupendous subjective idealist. 



THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 117 

and never dreams of it. He brings to bear on 
the mollusk the sensibilities of his tongue and 
digestive tract, and, in virtue of the conjoint 
and titillating testimony of these unassailable 
authorities, pronounces the oyster good. What 
an act of faith in the validity of the human 
stomach ! No telling where he will finally come 
out ! The only trouble with him is that he has 
not yet got far enough along to see that other 
things are also good. And learn to recognize 
this he never will, till higher and deeper ca- 
pacities within are stirred to life, till he can 
bring to bear on grander objects a wider and 
richer range of equally valid testimonials from 
a living sense of beauty, from delicate and in- 
spiring responses of heart, conscience, gratitude, 
veneration, — testimonials that may then appear, 
to a larger exercise of his faculties, quite as 
solid and authoritative as those of his tongue 
and digestive tract. Meanwhile, let him be 
loyal to his oyster and to the grounds of his 
faith in him, crying, "Lord, I believe: help 
thou mine unbelief." The oyster also is God's 
creature. 



XXII. 

FATHERS AFTER THE FLESH AND FA= 
THERS AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

<</^\LD John Brown" probably never wrote 
^ _> ^ an article in an educational journal in 
his life. And yet he held very decided opinions 
about the right way of bringing up boys. 

Here was a man who from childhood had 
known what it was to face the barest poverty. 
In course of time, he gained a foothold in the 
world, married, and stood head of a family of 
eleven children. What did he now long to do 
for his boys? 

Ambitious he was for them, determined that 
they should have the best this world offers. 
Yes, the best, like the fond father he was. And 
what seemed to him the best? Places in the 
Custom-house, and all the work over by three 
o'clock P.M.? No: he aimed his arrows at a 
higher mark. First and foremost, a chance to 
serve the down-trodden, a consecration of heroic 



AFTER THE FLESH AND AFTER THE SPIRIT. 119 

spirit that, in this service, would make them 
count it all joy to lie out in malarious marshes 
or be riddled with bullets or hung on a scaffold. 

What, his own iiesh and blood ? Did he not 
start up in terror to wave them back from such 
a fate? Nay, he strode on at their head, to 
clasp it with hands of smiling welcome. " Only 
once in a century does the Almighty give a 
father a chance to provide so grandly for his 
sons," was his own exultant language. If any- 
thing in a higher strain than that can be found 
in Plutarch, quote it now and here, or else for- 
ever after hold your peace ! 

Standing by the grave of John Brown in 
North Elba, among the Adirondack Mountains, 
one feels the grandeur of words like these of his. 
Everything in the scene is in absolute keeping 
with the homespun simplicity yet Hebraic sub- 
limity of the man. The plain, one-story farm- 
house, seeming to say with Paul, "Having foo I 
and raiment, let us therewith be content " ; the 
gold-waving oat-field, cleared by his own sinewy 
arm out of the surrounding forest ; the massive 
granite boulder, adamantine type of the man 
himself, at whose base he sleeps; the rude flag- 
headstone of his grandfather, a soldier of the 



120 BIRD-BOLTS. 

Revolution; the very flowers, not exotic lilies 

and roses, but native golden-rod and fire-weed, 

laid by some reverent pilgrim on the grave ; and 

then, environing all, the grand panorama of 

purple-black, fir-clad mountains, so eloquent of 

him whose whole life had been a responding cry, 

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from 

whence cometh my help!" — all these combine 

in one rich, soul-satisfying impression, never to 

be forgotten till one's dying day. And then 

to read the simple record cut beneath his own 

into the forefather's headstone: "John Brown, 

executed at Charlestown, Va. ; Oliver, killed at 

Harper's Ferry; Watson, wounded at Harper's 

Ferry October 17, died of his wounds October 19; 

Frederick, murdered at Ossawatomie." What 

a holocaust to liberty out of one single family! 

Perhaps it were too much to demand of the 

flesh-and-blood weakness of most parents that 

they should rise to the Pisgah height of old 

John Brown's outlook for his boys. He was 

one of a million. Still there sounds out from 

Scripture a grand and even awful expression 

which, would God, every parent might fathom 

in its depths. It is this: "Fathers after the 

Flesh and Fathers after the Spirit." 



AFTER THE FLESH AND AFTER THE SPIRIT. 121 

Perfectly legitimate, it is but fair to ■» admit, 
the resolute struggle so many a father and 
mother undergo, working, denying themselves, 
scrimping even, that they may be able, as the 
phrase runs, "to leave their children some- 
thing." But, in the name of the Highest, is a 
little more or less of money all the most con- 
secrated parents can bequeath their children, — 
parents who have lived before them twenty, 
thirty, forty years, with full opportunity to 
inspire them with appreciation of what wise, 
rich, joyous, and noble things can be got out of 
human life ? No fine aroma of grace and cour- 
tesy, of sweetness and light, of high T strung, 
sensitive honor, of devout submission and up- 
soaring faith, to exhale from the memories their 
children will have of them, — children who, none 
the less, will have to bear their burden in the 
struggle and mystery of the world ! 

Who but must oftentimes feel benumbed with 
chill, as he goes into many a household of mate- 
rial prosperity, to find that the very names of 
the wisest, happiest, most opulent and beatific 
souls this planet has nourished in its bosom are 
all unknown, — that not a trace, not a vestige, is 
visible there of all they have ever sung, aspired, 



122 BIRD-BOLTS. 

or dared. And one cries : " Here dwells the 
poverty of j)overty. God help the orphaned 
children of such living parents ! " 

Then — but to feel the abyss of contrast — 
recall to mind the prayer Wordsworth breathed 
for the sister he yearned to touch with a sense, 
kindred to his own, of the peace and elevation 
hidden for all in the divine manifestation of 
Nature, — the sister in the shrine of whose sacred 
memories of him he would have his own name 
fragrantly embalmed : — 

" Nor perchance 
If I should be where I no more can hear 
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams 
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget 
That on the banks of this delightful stream 
We stood together ; and that I, so long 
A worshipper of Nature, hither came 
Unwearied in that service; rather say 
With warmer love, oh ! with far deeper zeal 
Of holier love." 



XXIII. 

OVERCHARGING THE GUN. 

1VT O doubt it is an excellent habit with gun- 
makers to test every fowling or field piece 
they turn out with a charge of powder many 
times heavier than any fool is likely later on to 
load it with. Better, they think, burst a barrel 
now and then, under safe circumstances, than 
allow an invisible flaw to take secret advantage 
of an incautious boy in the future. But whether 
the like rule of overcharging the piece at the 
outset is an equally sound one to adopt with 
juvenile ministers at ordinations, not to speak 
of others undertaking new and grave responsi- 
bilities, is a more serious question. 

From the accounts with which the ordinary 
religious newspapers regale their readers, of the 
ecclesiastical method of loading, shotting, and 
then discharging on a given parish a callow the- 
ological-fledgeling, rational wonder is awakened 
as to what percentage of the human pieces thus 



124 BIRD-BOLTS. 

severely tested fail to burst the first time. The 
heaviest specimen of long-proved, old minis- 
terial ordnance would be infallibly shattered to 
fragments, were it called upon to explode within 
its chamber one-half the amount of celestial and 
demoniacal gunpowder or to fling one-hali' 
the weight of solid iron ball and chain-shot 
logic that is prescribed in the so-called u charge 
to the pastor" as the ammunition with which 
he, an utterly inexperienced youth, is expected 
to load up and fire. 

Ordination programmes are the masterpiece 
of Satan. If anything more ingeniously con_ 
trived for taking hope and courage out of a 
young heart has ever been lilt upon, it would be 
hard to name it. For three mortal hours is 
Pelion piled upon Ossa, till too often must a 
sympathetic spectator feel that, should the over, 
whelmed victim, in wandering forlornly around 
after the service, happen upon poor weary old 
Atlas, bearing on his shoulders the burden of 
the globe, he would hail the encounter as the 
happiest conceivable chance for his first minis- 
terial exchange. 

Now, what good can come of such stupendous 
overdoing? A man is not a gun-barrel at his 



• OVERCHARGING THE GUN. 125 

very strongest, when first out of the welding 
and polishing shops of a divinity school. Even 
the attempt at hardening pups by exposure all 
night to an outdoor temperature of ten degrees 
below zero has been abandoned. The survival 
of the fittest was not found sufficient to keep up 
the breed. 

Teachers' institutes are quite as flagrant sin- 
ners in this respect as clerical convocations. 
To stand by and watch some of the old artil- 
lerymen of the Horace Mann type ram home 
the regulation charge for an inexperienced 
young man or woman of twenty is enough to 
make any prudent on-looker hurry behind a 
tree or stone-wall for personal safety. The 
mere amount of wad in the way of school re- 
ports, pedagogical treatises, etc., is something 
appalling. 

Fair play! is the cry of every Saxon heart. 
This putting a ton's weight on the ministerial 
or teacher side of the j^latform scales, and an 
ounce's weight on that of people, parents, and 
pupils, can serve only to keep the wretched 
incumbent monotonously down to the ground. 
Better far take a lesson of the children, and 
study how they manage matters when they 



126 BIRD-BOLTS. 

slide a plank across a fence for an exhilarat- 
ing seesaw. Truly, of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. Let any one try to seat fifty pounds 
of boy or girl on one end of the plank, and call 
upon that amount of animate avoirdupois to 
strain and struggle with a hundred pounds on 
the other end. " No fair ! " " No fair ! " is in 
a minute ringing on every hand. The shrewd 
philosophers! Well enough they understand 
how the whole fun of the tilt lies in a mutual, 
happy sense of, " Now we go up ! up ! up ! and 
now we go down ! down ! downy ! " No : to 
put a lone young man or woman on one end of 
the board, and the whole massed weight of 
congregation or pirpils, with a sporadic deacon 
or committee-man thrown in, on the other, and 
then expect them, either one, to raise the joyful 
song of Mother Goose, is a proceeding of the 
ineffable meanness of which no good-hearted 
children, only grown-up parents or church mem- 
bers, are capable. 



XXIV. 

THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 

'"PHERE is a great deal of abstruse and 
technical talk about style in writing. 
But, after all, the difference between a good 
style and a bad amounts to precisely the same 
thing as that between an expressive human face 
and one that looks, for all the world, like a 
boiled dumpling. The monotonous aspect of 
the dumpling ripples into no smiles, melts with 
no tenderness, dilates with no scorn. Whether 
it has ever loved, been married, lost children, 
hated, cursed, or prayed, no man can gather 
from anything it "lets on " about itself. Mean- 
while, the expressive face is telling a perpetual 
story. Thence, the abounding gratitude men 
feel toward a writer with a living style. Dear 
fellow, he is too good to be kept to himself! 

There are men of whom Emerson says that, 
the moment they take a pen into their hands, 
it acts like a torpedo-fish and benumbs every 



128 BIRD-BOLTS. 

faculty. Was not such a one honest old Dr. 
Samuel Johnson ? And the reason why he be- 
came such, does it not date from the preposter- 
ous advice he gave that every one who aspired 
to mastership in style should "devote his days 
and nights to the study of Addison " ? 

Alas, poor doctor! Why not, rather, to the 
study of some incarnation of life in the world 
of nature, — say, to sympathetic communion with 
the ways of a kitten rapturously whirligiging 
round after her own tail? There is perfection 
of style for one ! Who can escape the conta- 
gious glee of her spirits, who doubt the royal 
fun she is having? Not a misstroke to divert 
the mind an instant from the rollicking theme 
she is illustrating. Better could she not reveal 
herself, had she committed the Vicar of Wake- 
field to memory and extracted the inmost secret 
of Goldsmith. Nay, was it not because Gold- 
smith was so much of a kitten himself, and 
enjoyed so rapturously playing with every 
mouse of an idea he caught and let run, and 
recaught and patted and frolicked over, that 
one finds him almost as good as pussy herself? 

Get Dr. Johnson at the dinner table, and 
more glorious company could no man ask. 



THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 129 

There was style worth devoting days and 
nights to the study of. What ten-strokes every 
time with the solid, Saxon, lignum-vitse balls he 
bowled, with such Bowery-boy momentum, at 
the pins! It was the doctor himself who an- 
swered the invitation to dinner, — the burly Eng- 
lish shoulder-hitter, the deep-chested laugher. 
But set him to writing an article for the Ram- 
bler. Presto, change ! Exit aboriginal Saxon, 
enter Brummagem Latin. Exeunt rugged epi- 
thets and junks of solid sense, enter a seesaw 
tilt of antithetical phrases; the ponderous ab- 
stract idea on one end of the plank exactly 
counterbalancing the ponderous abstract idea 
on the other. Alas! there was all the differ- 
ence that is witnessed in many a divine, — the 
meatiest of fellows when down the harbor fish- 
ing with savory clams for cod, the most oppres- 
sive of mortals when fishing out of a pulpit for 
sinners, with stale, traditional bait inviting 
never a bite. 

Of course, all writing cannot take on the 
diverting^ form of a kitten playing with its tail. 
But is not nature inexhaustible in examples 
suitable to every variety of subject ? Admit 
that there must be a gruff and surly style as 



130 BIRD-BOLTS. 

well as a genial and winsome one. Why not, 
then, consecrate days and nights to the study 
of the English bull-dog, as ideal illustration of 
such style? Can the mind ask a more soul-sat- 
isfying revelation of inner grouty consciousness 
in speaking, external form? That ominous, 
bloodshot eye, that nose turned up in morose 
disgust, those lips retracted from the sharp, 
ugly fangs, — surely, here again is something 
infinitely more instructive and stimulating than 
Addison. 

Admit even farther, for the sake of argu- 
ment, — for some men will keep on arguing till 
doomsday, — that all cannot legitimately aspire 
to the rank of literary bull-dogs, — that, in hu- 
mility, many a one must confess himself inca- 
pable either of inspiring terror or of pulling 
down a bull by the nose, and can, at best, only 
essay to snap spitefully at a horse's heels, till 
the noble creature kicks out in exasperation at 
the petty annoyance. All the same ! How, 
under the depressing recognition, can he more 
fruitfully improve his time than by devoting 
his days and nights to the ways of a yelping 
cur.? 

In line, let a man be shut up in the field of 



THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 131 

literature to the most insignificant role, to that 
of a mosquito only, still the rule holds always. 
Sager advice can be given him by no man than 
sympathetically to ponder the style of the mos- 
quito. No light thing will the tyro find it to 
learn how "to wind his sultry horn," to select 
the hottest night, to bite and rebite till the blood 
is fevered, to hide behind the bedpost when the 
irritable match is struck, and then, the moment 
the candle is extinguished, sally out afresh with 
a blare of triumph, as the despairing victim lies 
down again to vain repose. Why, the highest 
critical praise ever lavished on Alexander Pope 
was that, in his most perfect passages, he be- 
came fairly the peer of a wasp. 

Now, the reason of the truly fascinating suc- 
cess, in the item of effective style, attained by 
kittens, bull-dogs, and mosquitoes, while so many 
college graduates, after the most assiduous rhe- 
torical instruction, make so disastrous a bungle 
in bringing out their inner consciousness to the 
light of day, is a subject of grave importance 
for a General University Convention. Perhaps, 
as a mere tentative " shy " at the solution of so 
profound a problem, the query may be ventured 
whether the superiority of the first-named artists 



132 BIRD-BOLTS. 

does not come of their perfect self-surrender to 
the charm and intensity of the immediate idea 
that solicits them, thus beautifully illustrating 
what the sublime Pascal calls the inmost secret 
of style, "the absolute correspondence between 
expression and impression." 

No thorough-bred bull-dog dissipates his idio- 
syncrasy of native gift in the futile attempt to 
smile a witching smile; no mosquito, in croon- 
ing a soothing lullaby over the infant cradled 
for his first, sweet sleep. But man is never 
content with simple abandonment to nature. 
A capital, expressive style of his own he had 
when a baby, and obliged to wait till his milk 
was heated. Equally perfect his style when, a 
boy in school, he twitched the hair of his mate 
in front of him, and looked wholly absorbed in 
study. Not an organ that was not sweetly at- 
tuned to the indwelling idea. Later on, alas! 
he ate of the apple of self-consciousness, and fell 
from paradise. He entered society, and, for 
anguish over the unsolved problem whether 
the lower button on his waistcoat ought to be 
buttoned or not, could concentrate his genius 
neither on talking nor laughing, neither on 
taking nor giving delight. Soul streamed no 



THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 133 

longer through the happy channels that dis- 
charge on eye or tongue or pen, but only 
through those abortive nerves of sensibility 
which terminate in the trowsers' pockets or have 
their periphery in the shirt-collar. 



XXV. 

EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 

A COMMON form taken by the self-glorify- 
ing spirit of the present day is the boast 
of the immense treasures of the accumulated 
science, wit, wisdom, eloquence, poetry, piety, of 
past ages, stored up and at its disposal. Im- 
pressive, indeed, is it to wander through the 
interminable alcoves of a great public library. 
There, ranged tier on tier, are the masters of 
eloquence, Demosthenes, Cicero, Pitt, Burke, 
Webster ; there, the kings of poetry, Homer, 
iEschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Milton ; there, the 
giants of abstract thought, Descartes, Spinoza, 
Hume, Berkeley, Kant ; there, the law-givers of 
science, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin. Over and 
beyond these, lo ! piled up in tens, in hundreds of 
thousands of volumes, the fancies, the thoughts, 
of the great novelists, essayists, inventors, travel- 
lers, humorists, divines. Who that in imagina- 
tion can begin to embrace the range of experi- 



EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 135 

ence, observation, suffering, rapture, of which, 
these books are the record? And all these are 
ours ! 

For a moment, the sense of pride and self- 
glorification seems excusable enough. But an 
instant later, and there strikes athwart the mind 
an arresting thought, that startles, and fairly 
takes away the breath. But just now had we 
said, " All this knowledge, science, wit, humor, 
vision, rapture, are in the world." But are they? 
Can a book laugh, a book thrill, a book weep, 
a book adore ? What is a book ? A pound or 
two of pasteboard, paper, and printer's ink, — the 
printer's ink stamped indeed in a shape that may 
enable it to point at certain objects and experi- 
ences in nature and human life, and, with more 
than Prospero's wand, summon these up before 
an intelligence capable of fresh creative vision. 
But can they work this miracle with any vivid- 
ness in the actual reader's mind, work it in any 
rational order, in any rich and beautiful com- 
bination, like to that in which the thinker or 
poet originally saw and felt the whole? Else 
had the printed page as well have been blurred 
by tracks left by the legs of insects falling into 
the inkstand and crawling; across the sheet. 



136 BIRD-BOLTS. 

Truly, a startling thought this, to him who 
really takes its import in. Every book that is 
to live again is to live through you and me. 
Every poem that is to sing, every prayer that is 
to breathe again, -is to sing and breathe through 
you and me. There is no more knowledge, no 
more poetry, no more piety in the world in any 
given hour than you and I revive in our private 
breasts. Living thought is there none but in 
the thinker, living admiration but in the ad- 
mirer. What Newton demonstrated, a few 
mathematical heads alone in Europe are capable 
of demonstrating after him; what Jesus felt 
in its rapture, a few saints; what Shakspere 
laughed and wept over of the mingled comedy 
and tragedy of human life, a few men and 
women of vast and varied powers of observa- 
tion. For ages, often a great writer dies. No 
mummied king in an Egyptian tomb is more 
absolutely dead, more a dried and withered 
mockery of a living, breathing man than he, till 
at last some kindred nature finds him out, begins 
once again to laugh, weep, soar with him, and 
for a second time he becomes incarnate spirit. 

Pride shall the thought start in us, or fathom- 
less humility, the moment we come deeply to 



EPISTLES OE COMMENDATION. 137 

ponder it,— how absolutely dependent on hum- 
ble you and me are a Burke and a Webster for 
the continuous knowledge in the world of their 
eloquence, a Raphael and Michel Angelo for their 
acknowledged glory as painters, even a Jesus for 
his vital recognition as saint and inspirer ? Out- 
ward letters of introduction will not help them. 
The best that these can effect is to furnish a 
certificate, such as the old booKsellers were wont 
to issue, that copies of the works of these great 
ones ought to adorn the shelves of every gentle- 
man's library. No : nothing short of epistles of 
commendation known and read of all men, writ- 
ten not with ink, but with the spirit of the living 
God, not on tables of stone, but in fleshly tables 
of the heart, will serve the purpose. Nay, even 
farther yet must we go. Reverently be it said, 
Deity himself is equally dependent for any living 
recognition of his goodness, wisdom, and glory 
on humble you and me. Formal letters of com- 
mendation to our children and our neighbors 
may we give him likewise. No end of such do 
we all indite in a perfunctory way. But they 
never help him. What he stands in immediate, 
indispensable need of is living epistles written 
on the heart. As vitally dependent he on these 



138 BIRD-BOLTS. 

as the sunlight on the clouds to reflect its rain- 
bow tints, on the lake to blaze a mirror of bur- 
nished gold, on the Alpine snows to flush with 
carmine and crimson. Insignificant, perhaps, 
the vapor of the atmosphere, insignificant the 
water-drop, insignificant the snow-flake. Still, 
without them, hidden forever, so far as mortal 
eye is concerned, the prismatic glories of the 
sunbeam. 

Here we are, then, living in a world in which 
great and resplendent things are perpetually fall- 
ing dead, in which poet, humorist, and painter, 
saint, sage, prophet, are evermore tending to be- 
come mere names, jDowerless to cheer or thrill or 
exalt ; and one and all are they crying to us, — 
ah! with what pathos in their tones, — Revive 
us, make us live once more as thought and love 
and will. All else is the thrice-sealed tomb. I, 
Jesus, am not truly risen but as I rise again in 
you, — compassion for poverty, peace for the 
weary and heavy-laden, cry of rapture over the 
flower of the field. Images, temples, I do not 
ask. I want to walk the familiar streets once 
more, — smile of greeting, tear of pity, breathing 
of peace on earth and good-will to men. Else 
have mine enemies truly slain me, and sealed me 
in a cave from which there is no arising. 



EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 139 

It was a sublime strain in which the Old 
Westminster Catechism began, with its defini- 
tion of the Chief End of Man,—" To glorify God 
and enjoy him forever." Revive that, at least, 
though all the rest stay dead ! Yes, evermore 
to be glorifying something good and great, and 
enjoying it in the highest, — this is the chief end 
of man. Never does he rise to dignity, beauty, 
command but in and through so doing. The 
humblest man or woman, the " Old Mortality " 
toiling in graveyards to scrape off the mosses 
and time-stains, to recarve the memorial of de- 
parted worth, is higher, in the witness he bears 
to a hurrying and thankless world, than the 
highest incapable of such veneration. 



XXVI. 

MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 

T T is a pretty sight to watch a group of eager 
boys and girls hanging over the slate or bit 
of paper on which one of their number, unani- 
mously recognized as an indubitable Raphael 
or Michel Angelo, is drawing something. What 
exclamations of delight as the ears, eyes, neck, 
back, legs, tail of the horse come out ! Adam 
and Eve in the garden, intently watching how 
"out of the ground the Lord God formed every 
beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and 
brought them unto Adam to see what he would 
call them," were not more entranced ; nay, nor 
surer to pronounce a horse a horse or a cow a 
cow. Such the eternal fascination of the crea- 
tive process, the delight of beholding something 
in the actual making ! 

No wonder the rest of the world gets down- 
right envious over people who can create any- 
thing new and beautiful. Away on a vacation 



MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 141 

by the seaside or among the mountains, one now 
and then falls in with an artist. Daily, the 
blessed fellow goes forth with his huge white 
umbrella, his easel, and his box of paints, and 
camps down before Mt. Adams or some lovely 
bit of lake scenery. How cunningly one tries to 
make friends with him, manoeuvring to get his 
shy nature so used to a foreign presence that 
it shall become feasible to lie near him on the 
grass, seemingly reading, but in reality rapt in 
watching how the sky grows on the late blank 
of the canvas, how the granite bastions of the 
mountains heave themselves up into sight, and 
the broad forests of maple and spruce throw 
regal mantles around their flanks. " Happy fel- 
low ! " the favored overlooker cries : " what a 
life to be thus ever creating something beautiful ! 
Alas for me ! 1 write sermons that make every- 
body wish they were done, or teach children 
who think me an ogre, or sell goods that at best 
clothe the body. But as for this blessed fellow, 
why, he is only-begotten child of the Creative 
Spirit : he is one with God, his Father worketh 
hitherto, and in the same vein he works! " 

T?es, he is all this. He has found the true 
vocation, and is the very man to envy. Only, 



142 BIRD-BOLT». 

paint-brushes and boxes must not be presumed 
to exhaust all the creative resources ot the uni- 
verse. The making something beautiful m one 
shape or another, this is the thing to yearn for, 
not the mere special knack with pencil, pen, or 
violin bow. 

Why, it was only the other day that an ardent 
young fellow came rushing in upon a group of 
friends, with an odd story like the following: 
" I've seen a new sort of artist I want to tell you 
about! This afternoon 1 went over to the New 
England Hospital lor W omen and Children, and 
the head physician, a woman with a rare blend- 
ing ot sweetness and light in her face, took me 
round through the wards. Presently, we entered 
that of the children, where were, perhaps, half a 
dozen little tots of from two to five, with their 
attendants. How the eyes beamed and the 
hands began to wave when they saw the wel- 
come lace, — not my ugly mug, ot course ! In 
the middle of the floor lay a warm blanket, on 
which was sprawling a chubby-cheeked, flaxen- 
haired little fellow ot two and a halt or three. 
'Let me show you how he can help himself on 
to his feet,' the beaming doctor said. And sure 
enough, when she had encouragingly reached 



MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 143 

him her hands, he worked himself up erect in 
such creditable fashion that I did not wonder at 
the banners of triumph hung out from his proud 
little face. * Two months ago,' she went on to 
say ' he was brought here diseased and half- 
starved. No bones, gristle only, through lack 
of proper food, But I'll make a brave little 
man out of him yet ! ' On her face glowed a 
look of such genuine delight over her blessed 
work that I felt an instinctive thrill. Aha ! an 
artist in little children here ! The veritable pres- 
ence of Raphael, bringing out the deep eyes and 
glorious brow of the Christ-child on his canvas, 
would not have been more moving. 'Happy 
woman!' was my instinctive thought: *what a 
life, to be thus ever striving to create something 
beautiful, health out of disease, firm-set bones 
and springing muscles out of listless imbecility, 
such a clinging embrace of love out of a blank 
past of neglect and cruelty ! Thy Father work- 
eth hitherto, and thou dost work.' " 



XXVII. 

THANKSGIVING DAY. 

T N a proclamation, to be read in all churches, 
Governor Long of Massachusetts or Gov- 
ernor Cornell of New York calls upon the men, 
women, and children of the Commonwealth to 
be jubilantly thankful. Who would not like to 
respond? Heartfelt gratitude is the richest 
poetry of life. But is it an emotion that can 
be manufactured to order at the call of even the 
devoutest of governors? And, of the two, who 
would not as lief undertake to squeeze out a 
tear of commiseration, on outright demand, as to 
break into a psalm of thanksgiving ? 

In point of tact, it is only while men are 
interested in and happy over some object that 
they are heartily grateful for it. Enjoyment 
and gratitude form the only bridal couple thar 
ever did or ever will live in loving harmony 
All other couples, however much they may call 
one another "my dear," or descant on "the 



THANKSGIVING DAY. 145 

holy tie that binds us," will lead a mutually tor- 
menting existence. And it sprang from a deep 
recognition of this that the New England fes- 
tival of Thanksgiving day became so rapidly 
changed from a public and state into a domestic 
and family celebration. 

Men and women are tolerably genuine when 
not called upon by an expectant community to 
enact a part. However they may feel about the 
country at large or the condition of the cotton 
crop, the universities or the revival interest 
they do appreciate a bountiful feast with a 
group of smiling faces around the board. The 
laughter is genuine, the love is rich and all 
aglow. . No call now to work the pump handle 
ot duty to force up intermittent spurts of grati- 
tude. Why, only look ! Here, for a single item, 
is the married daughter that left the house fif- 
teen months ago, back again in the old home 
once more, with a baby in her arms. The baby' 
Who says, "Go to now, it is a religious duty to 
be grateful when an event of this character 
transpires!" One crow from her little lungs 
and she has them all,- grandfather and grand- 
mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, cook, hired man, 
everybody. She is the miracle of the world 



146 BIRD-BOLTS. 

And, if any devout old soul were only to strike 
up the hymn, " Lo, God is here, let us adore ! " 
all would join heartily in chorus. 

A sincere and honest feeling was it, then, that 
prompted the New England people to make 
Thanksgiving day so much of a family festivals 
instead of sitting solitarily apart and reading 
Bancrofts History, The Constitution of the 
United States, or any other improving national 
work. So far as the thing went, it was a gen- 
uine recognition of the fact that the only possi- 
ble way to feel gratitude is to be absorbed and 
happy over something that is in itself grateful, 
and, if statistics of even four million bales of 
cotton and ten million tons of hay would not 
promote the genial flow, then to try turkey, 
cranberry sauce, blind-man's-buff, the baby. 

In the great providence of God there come to 
human beings many things that are sweet and 
cheering, and many that are exceeding bitter. 
Is it either demanded or is it possible that they 
should be regarded all alike ? In the very nat- 
ure of things, is it not evident — and at the last 
remove from any irreverential spirit is the prin- 
ciple stated — that even Deity himself must 
freely submit, in this matter of gratitude, to 



THANKSGIVING DAY. 147 

the same conditions he has imposed upon his 
creatures ? 

Human beings have to earn the gratitude of 
their fellows by persistent kindness, fidelity, and 
service, and that, moreover, in directions these 
fellows can appreciate. Often does it cost years 
to establish the claim. Now, just here comes 
the tug of war. As parents, the most devoted 
work men and women do for their children in 
educating them and striving to cure them of 
their faults is, and for the most part must be, a 
work anything but grateful to the subjects of it 
at the time. If the impatient mother will insist 
on immediate gratitude from them, there is a 
perfectly easy and open way to get it. She has 
only to let them go without washing their hands 
and faces, eat with the handle instead of the 
bowl of the spoon, leave coats and shoes just 
where they want to throw them, stay away 
from school and start out after chestnuts. Then 
will every day be Thanksgiving day on the part 
of the little ones, and no end of tears and sulks 
be spared. 

Simple folly is it therefore to look for imme- 
diate gratitude in the hour in which one, God or 
man, is cutting across the grain of headstrong 



148 BIRD-BOLTS. 

passion. Something may be indeed accom- 
plished then an 1 there that will earn future, but 
not present, recognition. Years perhaps ahead 
lies the day for saying with any genuine sin- 
cerity, " I wished you at the bottom of the sea 
once, but now I see you were my truest friend." 
Now, this latter-day gratitude is the only kind 
the great leaders and deliverers of the race — 
the deepest surely of all revealers of God to 
mankind — are permitted to hope for. People 
exjjress surprise that the Jewish mob, when the 
choice was left them between freeing Jesus or 
Barabbas, should have cried, " Crucify Jesus, 
and let Barabbas loose ! " Why, there was a 
day, in even moral and religious Boston, when 
thousands would have gladly unlocked all the 
cells in Charlestown prison, and cried to every 
counterfeiter, burglar, and murderer there, 
" Run ! run ! " if only in exchange they could 
have had the satisfaction of hanging Garrison. 
Thirty years later, many a one of these thou- 
sands subscribed a round sum to the testimonial 
in honor of the man ; aye, and did it just as 
gratefully as they would once have hanged him, 
and that simply because it had at last become 
clear to them what a real benefactor the once 



THANKSGIVING DAY. 149 

reviled agitator really was. If, then, it took 
this man thirty years to win the thankful recog- 
nition of even the northern half of the country, 
and will take perhaps thirty more before statues 
of him are set up, as they ultimately will be, in 
Charleston and New Orleans, what shall be 
said of the ways toward humanity of that stu- 
pendous Being, of whom, in awe before the 
vastness of his providential sweep, the psalmist 
cried, "A thousand years are in thy sight but 
as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in 
the night " ? 

Welcome, then, to Thanksgiving day, if it 
bring nothing more than a few hours of grati- 
tude for good cheer and bright faces. So far, 
so good. Half the world is dying for lack of 
thankfulness over something and of the fret and 
wear of discontent. Seeing, then, the sweetness 
of gratitude even in the simplest shape, what can 
be done to secure more freely its blessed visita- 
tion ? One thing only : the enlarging the num- 
ber of objects in life that are genuinely grateful 
to the mind, grateful all round, grateful to sense, 
intellect, affection, moral energy. " James and 
I have loved each other more than ever since 
we have worked together for a great cause," 



150 BIRD-BOLTS. 

said that sainted woman, Lucretia Mott. Of 
course James and she did. And so will every 
James and Lucretia. Can one thumbed, fiayed 
string evolve the music of an harmonious or- 
chestra ? 



XXVIIL 

ONE GUINEA AND FIVE GUINEA MONKEYS. 

T N Mr. Darwin's Origin of Species^ a curious 
-*■ story is told about a man who was in the 
habit of going to the Zoological Gardens in 
Regent's Park. London, to buy young monkeys 
for subsequent training. The price of them was 
a guinea apiece. One day, however, he said to 
the keeper, " If you will let me take a number 
of them home with me to try, I will give you 
five guineas for the one I decide to keep." 
" Why, how is that ? " was the answer : " do yon 
find such a difference in them?" "Oh, im- 
mense," replied the man. "When I begin to 
train them, if I come across a monkey whose 
attention is flying around every which way, his 
mind off the lesson every time a fly buzzes or a 
boy whistles, I know I shall never bring him to 
much. But when I get hold of one that is 
seriously inclined, you know, concentrating his 
mind on the subject and not allowing himself to 



152 BIRD-BOLTS. 

be diverted by outside trifles, I have no end of 
expectation as to the future awaiting him." 

Now, here was a man who was a born edu- 
cator. Without any of the advantages enjoyed 
by the graduates of Normal Schools, he could 
none the less, it may shrewdly be suspected, give 
any one of them a few " points." 

The main reason why the science of the edu- 
cation of horses, dogs and birds is so much 
more advanced than that of the education of 
human beings lies largely in the fact that in the 
domain of the former obstinate prejudices are 
not allowed to stand in the way of a rational 
method of setting to work. No sensible trainer 
undertakes to get a cart-horse into shape to win 
the Derby, or a pug to course with greyhounds, 
or a screech-owl to sing like a canary. By the 
way, it could be wished that this last refusal 
might commend itself to the serious considera- 
tion of principals of Schools of Oratory and 
Conservatories of Music. But this is a mere 
aside. So to return to the animals. 

As pupils, these happy creatures have none of 
them read in the Declaration of Independence 
that all men were created free and equal J nei- 
ther have they parents, with sensibilities to 



ONE GUINEA AND FIVE GUINEA MONKEYS. 153 

wound at the rude suggestion that there are 
such persistent facts in nature as that short leo-s 
are not providentially adapted for long strides, 
or scant breath for holding out on a stiff pull. 
And so teacher and scholar enjoy a much more 
rational time together than is possible in strictly 
human relations. Winged-heeled Iroquois does 
not find himself hauling gravel in a city cart, 
but flying in the van of the column of racers, 
with the American flag proudly fluttering from 
his head. Meanwhile, in equal turn, the heavy 
cart-horse blesses his stars he is not gettino- 
whipped and spurred, in the monstrous attempt 
to make him lumber through forty rods while 
those clipper-built fellows are playfully flinging 
off a mile. 

Painful is it to look on and see how many the 
ardent and sensitive teachers of children that 
are broken on the wheel of the irrational expec- 
tations to which they are subjected. Frankly, 
therefore, should such be warned at the outset 
that all distinction between one guinea and five 
guinea monkeys is abolished in the creed of 
numberless parents with whom they will be 
called upon to deal. Many the fond father who 
will ask them if they have not noticed the 



154 BIRD-BOLTS. 

remarkable similarity in shape between the head 
of his son and that of John Milton, and many 
the mother, the like between her daughter's and 
Mrs. Browning's ; aye, and rapidly will they lose 
credit for real perception should they unguard- 
edly admit they had not. 

Now all this is a matter young teachers must 
learn not to take too seriously. Often should a 
quiet sense of the humor of the thing ripple 
over their minds, to relieve the pressure of too 
heavy a burden of responsibility. Instead of 
breaking their hearts as over a tragedy, far 
better will they find it to go now and then and 
have a hearty laugh with the minister, as he 
tells them the story of the reproaches to which 
he is persistently subjected for imperfect success 
in making St. Johns out of stock-gamblers, St. 
Theresas out of gossips, and cherubs out of 
pampered children. 



XXIX. 

SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING 
CYMBALS. 

/^VF the manifold half-painful, half-comic ex- 
periences of life, — food at once for tears 
and mirth, — there are few that exceed the neces- 
sity of having oftentimes to listen to the kind 
of handling to which the sublimest outbursts of 
spiritual genius are subjected at the hands of lit- 
eral, unimaginative, utterly commonplace men. 

Who, for example, that has not gone out 
in alternate mood of anger or jest from some 
church, in which for a mortal hour a narrow- 
minded, illiterate preacher has been at work, 
and supposedly, in the spirit of Paul's superb 
outburst over the worthlessness of all gifts 
divorced from charity, to impress on his dazed 
and hopelessly-at-sea hearers the idea that it 
is quite possible for them to have the full circle 
of the virtues that constitute them the best of 
fathers and mothers, the most upright of busi- 



156 BIRD-BOLTS. 

ness men, the most public-spirited citizens, the 
kindest of friends to the lonely, poor, and sick, 
and yet be all the while utterly hateful to God, — 
nay, just so much the more in outright danger 
of hell because of these carnal excellences ? 

And yet, all the while, the poor, helpless man 
is not an example of hopeless obscuration and 
total mental and moral eclipse. A stray gleam 
of light is actually struggling down in the abyss 
of his mind, even though just effective enough 
to make darkness visible. Deeply is he to be 
pitied ; for in him is witnessed the painful and 
always abortive effort of prose to interpret poe- 
try ; the letter, the spirit ; reek and smoke, fire ; 
the beetle, the eagle. 

V And yet the light that led astray 
Was light from heaven." 

And now reverse the picture. A prophet of 
vision and flame, like Paul of Tarsus, essays 
the identical theme of our helplessly stumbling 
preacher. Yet once let him sweep the sj)irit 
aloft on the wings of his own sublime imagi- 
nation into the realm of the ideal, and with 
what free and joyous consent does every appre- 
ciative mind follow him ! Full, almost stagger- 



SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING CYMBALS. 157 

ing to the calm, enumerating reason, the jmnoply 
of virtues in which he clothes the would-be 
exemplar of the richest gifts and graces, only, 
with majestic sweep into nothingness, to declare 
him but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
The tongues of men and of angels, faith that can 
remove mountains, all goods bestowed to feed 
the poor, the body given to be burued, and the 
result — nonentity ! 

Still, what kindred spirit that has sympatheti- 
cally yielded itself to the ideal meaning of the 
lyric prophet is either staggered or aghast ? 
Yes ! yes ! all how true that, to the soul that has 
caught sight of the higher vision and felt its 
entrancing loveliness, the lower has become dim, 
colorless, without inspiration, of the earth, earthy ! 
It is as though Dante or Milton, their ears filled 
with the sublime harmony of the majestic ocean 
of billowing numbers that has come rolling in 
upon them, were declaring of the poor spinet- 
rhymes of contemporary poetasters : " These 
things are naught ! They are less than naught ! " 
It is as though Copernicus, caught up and 
swept along by the stupendous revolutions of 
the planetary system, beholding no longer in the 
sun earth's trivial satellite, but the sublime and 



158 BIRD-BOLTS. 

omnipotent arbiter of a universe of orderly and 
obedient motion, were proclaiming of all past 
astronomical theories, however ingenious, how- 
ever satisfactory to a lower stage of intelligence : 
"These things are child's play! These things 
are child's play!" 

Never can the inner meaning of superb out- 
bursts like this of Paul be lived into, until in- 
terpreted in at least the same spirit with which 
we ourselves so often cry, of a singer famed, it 
may be, and hailed with salvos of applause from 
thousands : " Yes, here are volume, . skill, train- 
ing, masterly execution ; yet how do all these 
sink into naught, into less than naught, the 
moment there thrills on the ear a single strain 
from this other voice ' with a tear in it ' ! " 

Alas for the teacher in any department, — art, 
music, literature, morals, — who is not capable at 
times of like vehement and, literally taken, exag- 
gerated outbursts ; who, with all due praise of 
mere industry and ]:>atient effort, does not now 
and then break out : " Yes, John, Mary, you have 
drawn that correctly, you have played or sung 
that as it is written down; but there are no 
freedom and abandonment, no charm and aroma 
in the way you have done it. You have hit 



SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING CYMBALS. 159 

everything except precisely that which alone 
renders the work worth doing at all. You have 
given us the all of the rose but its perfume, the 
all of the lily but its grace and purity ; and now 
I want you to feel, in the holy name of the 
ideal, that the best of this sort of thing 'profit- 
eth nothing ' ! " 



XXX. 

ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 

HP HIS last summer, at the mountains, I 
chanced to fall in, on a very lonely road, 
with a man of fifty-five or sixty, carrying by 
a chain over his shoulder a small steel-trap. 
He was poorly clad, — indeed, a most dilapi- 
dated specimen of humanity alike in clothes, 
visage, and gait, — and, on closer inspection, 
I recognized him as the very man I had a fort- 
night or so before accosted, with the result of 
a rather surly answer. 

At any other period in my psychological 
history, one rebuff would have been enough ; 
but it so happened that I had just been con- 
scientiously reading an essay of Emerson, in 
which the importance was urged of making 
it a point to learn something from all classes 
and conditions of people. Shakspere was 
cited as an instructive instance of a man who 
could never talk live minutes with a carter, 



ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 161 

tapster, or huckster without getting his mental 
norizon enlarged ; and seeing that even so great 
a one as he had made such creditable acquisi- 
tions through pocketing his pride and coming 
down from his high, tragic horse, there seemed 
no valid reason why I likewise should not at- 
tempt the same. 

"You look like a poor fellow the world has 
used hardly," I said to myself, as I drew near 
my tattered and stiff -jointed experimental man. 
"Been leading, I suppose, from boyhood an 
utterly monotonous life on one of these stony 
bits of land up here, with little of the chance 
I and so many other lucky fellows have had of 
seeing the great world ! " 

So determining to begin with words of one 
syllable, and avoid Dante, Michel Angelo, and 
other themes more kindred to my own sphere of 
mind, I baited the steel-trap for a start in con- 
versation, and to my delight soon found — if the 
strength of the metaphor will be pardoned — 
that it had snapped us together in the jaws of 
the most cordial amity. 

Very enthusiastic did my friend now grow in 
showing me how the ugly instrument had to be 
set in- running water and hidden in brook-weeds 



162 BIRD-BOLTS. 

to deceive the wary creatures. Forthwith, I 
blessed Emerson in my heart, as I found my 
horizon of view rapidly enlarging as to how 
easily the relation between teacher and school- 
boy may be reversed, enlarging farther as to 
what varied acquisitions I personally should 
have to make before I could hope to rise to the 
level of so much as the contempt of a self- 
respecting fox. 

Hunting is a capital subject to start a talk 
with, for it at once sets on foot a passion to beat 
up all kinds of game. 

"Got a wife and family?" I after a while 
interjected, to try whether I could not rouse a 
domestic quarry. 

" Yes, I married a poor young gal, only nine- 
teen, a year ago, and have got a fust-rate little 
boy." 

Horizon again enlarged as to the needlessness 
of any man, whatever his age or looks, despair- 
ing. Horizon likewise enlarged into the depths 
of loneliness and yearning in so many a woman's 
heart, making her glad of anything, however 
ragged and dilapidated, in the shape of a male 
protector. 

" Began rather late in life," I innocently sug- 
gested. 



ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 163 

" Oh, no ! I married a woman thirty-five year 
ago, and then 'listed for the Mexican war. Got 
back after three years, and found I had had two 
children while I was off. So I jest quit her." 

Here, at a stroke, the clash of arms and faith- 
less Helen of Troy, — all in one short episode of 
a life I had supposed utterly monotonous and 
barren of incident. So we exchanged views on 
Mexico, the Spaniards, the qualities of the 
American soldier, and the plague of woman. 

" What next after that?" I now began. 

" Oh, I went to the Adirondacks, and stayed 
there fifteen year. Hunted and went guide to 
them rich New York fellers that come up there 
to shoot." 

" Ever at Lake Placid ?" I asked, with a vague 
hope in my mind, and of which I reaped the 
harvest even before I had stated what it really 
was. 

" Oh, yes ! Killed the biggest bear there I ever 
see. Was huntin' on shares with a man lived 
up there, — guess you've hearn tell on him, was 
hung just before the war, — old John Brown 
they called him." 

" Aha ! " I said to myself, as I pricked up my 
ears, "hunted whole days with John Brown. 



1G4 BIRD-BOLTS. 

What a chance to get at the old hero ! Who 
would not give up many a year of life to have 
had it!" 

Then I indifferently replied : " Oh, yes ! I've 
heard his name. How did you and he get 
along ? " 

"John Brown was the resolutest and most 
savagest man I ever see." 

I soon found, however, that my friend used 
English a little differently from the rest of us. 
By " most savagest " he only meant most deter- 
mined to put through a hunt spite of danger, 
foul weather, or hurricane on the lake ; for he 
kept continually adding, " John Brown was the 
kindest and good-naturedest creetur I ever see ! " 

Other tribute than this I could not get out 
of my roadside friend. No interest had he evi- 
dently taken in the slavery issue, no share had 
he had in the brooding scheme that night 'and 
day was hatching its warrior-clan in the fiery 
brain of the great Puritan hero. 

Horizon once again enlarged, — enlarged as 
to the loneliness of such grand characters as 
Brown, how they are with ordinary mortals and 
yet not of them, seen of them in their every-day 
aspects and yet hidden in their inmost essence. 



ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 165 

Horizon likewise enlarged as to the value of 
the men of destiny and high-wrought tragedy 
and triumph so bearing themselves in daily life 
that the most commonplace of their companions 
can at least utter enthusiastic witness of them, — 
"The kindest and good-naturedest creetur I 
ever see!" 

Such was my first experience in applying the 
high idealism of Emerson to practical life. We 
parted, this roadside waif and I, the best of 
friends ; for what makes men better friends than 
sympathetically sharing with one another a few 
leaves torn out of the book of this strange and 
eventful existence into which all are plunged? 
Certainly, for one, I shall henceforth believe in 
more of life and destiny as hidden inside the 
most dilapidated of old coats and worn and bat- 
tered of visages than ever before, as I connect 
my chance acquaintance with the great human- 
ity of which he is a typical though ragged 
member. 



XXXI. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR. 

r^ RAVITATION is, no doubt, a most admi- 
rable principle, as philosophers explain 
how it keeps mankind stuck fast to their little 
planet, feet down and head up, and thus safe 
from congestion of brain. Somehow or other, 
however, the crowd always raises a mighty 
shout when it sees a balloon shoot up into the 
air and apparently escape the tremendous press- 
ure that pins the rest of the world close down 
to the ground. Ballooning always was, and al- 
ways will be, a highly popular amusement, just 
because it furnishes such a lively illustration of 
that exultant leap into freedom and space 
which tired humanity is always craving for 
itself. Thank God, then, for the New Year 
festival. It is "Up in a Balloon, Boys!" all 
around the globe. 

" Up in a Balloon, Boys ? " It is up in a mill- 
ion. The sky is full of them, with their gay 
ribbons and flaunting streamers; and, out of 



HAPPY NEW YEAR. 167 

each hanging car, men, women, and children are 
shouting to one another : " Happy New Year ! " 
"Gravitation is abolished!"' "No more debts, 
no more exhausting pressure of work, no more 
headaches, heartaches, sins!" Who but de- 
lights to share the general exhilaration, and not 
only wishes his neighbor, but genuinely believes 
it will come to him, all manner of delights in 
this world and the next ? 

Man, at best, can do but one thing well at a 
time. On the Fourth of July, let him work up 
his patriotism with fire-crackers, and on Fast 
Day his speed on the Brighton road. ^ Surely, 
it is no loss, therefore, to devote one day in the 
three hundred and sixty-five to ballooning after 
happiness in such glorious company, everybody 
included, black Charles, Celtic Bridget, Chinese 
Wah-Sin. A cry of "Lynch him on the spot!" 
ought to be raised against every cynical despe- 
rado bent on going round, pin in hand, pricking- 
holes in those iridescent, aerial bubbles that, for 
twenty-four hours at least, lift nine-tenths of the 
world high up into the empyrean. 

The true way to get the benefit out of any 
festival is first to fling the mind wholesale into 
it and enjoy it to the top of its bent, and only 



168 BIRD-BOLTS. 

afterward to reflect on its real significance. No 
nnatomical lectures over a juicy leg of mutton! 
Of all the men to climb a mountain with, the 
worst of bores are those who are forever analyz- 
ing which particular flexors and extensors among 
their muscles are getting the good of the exer- 
cise, or precisely what is the percentage of ozone 
that is making one feel like a roe on the hillside. 
All the rich and blessed things humanity has 
aimed at have had an element of illusion .in 
them, and promise more in the spirit than they 
can keep in the flesh. But who wishes the dawn 
to give up the habit of flushing mountain and 
plain witli crimson and gold, because, later on 
in the day, it may chance to rain? 

The true way, then, to use the New Year 
season is, first of all, to surrender the heart to 
its spirit, and get up a head of generous sym- 
pathetic steam. Later on will be time enough 
to raise the question just how to gear on its 
working force to practical ends. Here comes 
along a poor devil of a friend, who has had a 
hard time in the year that is past. Why not 
accost him like a hearty fellow, who believes 
better of this world than that it is a mere 
sucked-out orange, and knows that it really has 



HAPPY NEW YEAR. 169 

surprises and blessings still in store ? This 
forever hanging back and saying to one's self, 
" I do not really know what practical thing I 
can do to help a given person," is a vast mis- 
take. The man understands as well as you, or 
better perhaps, that you can do nothing in es- 
pecial. But he is none the less glad to learn 
that you wish in your heart you could. 

What good can you do, for example, if his 
child lies dead in the house? None, you say. 
Yes, a world of good ! You can make him feel 
that, were you God, he should in an instant see 
the blood flush the marble cheek of the little 
one, and hear once more the music of her voice. 
He knows perfectly well you are not God. But 
he loves you none the less for your human sym- 
pathy. Who expects the innumerable men, 
women, and children that run up to him on 
New Year's day, and make the air vocal with 
their salutations, to be able to ward off from 
him all the blows of life ? Is he, therefore, bru- 
tally to cry to them, "Good wishes butter no 
parsnips," as the proverb runs? Enough that 
it is an exhilarating spectacle to see humanity 
break loose one ■ in a while, and cheer the world 
up by showing what is really inside the human 
heart. 



XXXII. 

THE RELATION OF NUMBER ONE TO 
NUMBER TWO. 

COME years ago there died a lady whose life 
furnished a real contribution to this per- 
plexing question. Married in her early youth 
to a man of high intellectual endowment, and 
with every prospect of a brilliant career before 
him, a few years of overwork reduced him to a 
nervous wreck. A bed-ridden future was all he 
could look forward to. 

With rare good sense and the bravest kind of 
self-devotion, the young wife faced the position. 

" If I shut myself up day and night in the 
sick-room as a mere nurse," she argued, "it will 
be bad for him, bad for me. Will two broken- 
down, nervous wrecks help the matter? Not 
only shall I be a better and happier woman if 
I can maintain, through all the trying years 
before us, high health, stout courage, wide 
social interest j but I shall be of a thousand- 



NUMBER ONE AND NUMBER TWO. 171 

fold more help to him. No sham, however, 
will serve for reality. Unless first I heartily 
enjoy these things myself, every attempt to 
refresh and animate him by talking them over 
will be forced and dreary." 

So she resolutely formed her plans. The first 
person she had to take into her counsel was 
"Number One " ; and, on rationally studying the 
nature of this " Number One," she found he was, 
in herself as in everybody else, an intractable 
sort of personality, who would neither sleep 
soundly nor eat heartily, neither enjoy nature 
and society nor keep abreast of what was inter- 
esting in books or art, unless himself really 
treated to a comfortable bed, a hearty meal, a 
beautiful landscape, and a kind of literature he 
could laugh or cry over in good faith. On these 
conditions only would lie maintain himself so 
strong and stout of heart, so bright m wit and 
aglow with animation, that, introduce him into a 
sick-room where a sufferer, down with nervous 
prostration, was lying, there would be a ring in 
his voice and a breeziness m his conversation 
that would prove more tonic than bark and iron 
to the weary monotony of the bed-ridden life. 

Oftentimes, indeed, did it come over the 



172 BIRD-BOLTS. 

young wife how vastly easier and pleasanter it 
would be to sit down and have a good cry rather 
than be forced to bestir herself in so many need- 
ful ways to keep " Number One " in health and 
spirits ; but, as often as she yielded to this 
fascination for any length of time, the fellow 
obstinately took the dumps, grew dyspeptic, and 
told his old stories over till the jDOor, weary 
patient he was ministering to secretly wished 
him in Tophet. So, bracing herself up once 
more, into company she went, into the woods to 
hear the birds sing, into the lecture-room to 
learn something new ; and thus for years kept 
herself healthy and attractive, and proved the 
unspeakable solace of her husband. 

And yet who doubts that, through all this 
period of brave and wise heroism, so sensible a 
woman must have been a target shot full of 
bitter and uncharitable arrows at the hands of 
the large class of morbid and sacrificial Avives, 
whose ideal of love consists in being utterly 
woe-begone so long as their husbands are, and 
who take plaintive satisfaction in noting how 
their color is fading, their interest in society 
dying out, their lungs, heart, and digestion get- 
ting undermined in martyr proof of their spirit 



NUMBER ONE AND NUMBER TWO. 173 

of more than Hindu self-immolation. Very nice 
for them, no doubt ! But how about the hus- 
bands ? 

What man of sense, were he to be laid by 
for years with nervous disease, would hesitate 
'•which of the two to choose" in the way of 
a wife to tend him? The one-sided and mor- 
bidly-sacrificial woman,; — honestly out with it! 
— would she not grow to be unspeakably mo- 
notonous and tiresome ? Soon would she have 
told all her old stories and sighed all her old 
sighs. jSTo cheery atmosphere would she diffuse 
of vitality, laughter, pleasant gossip, vista of 
wider social interests. By and by would her 
own health break down, and then would com- 
panionship with her be practically as cheering 
as with one's own wasted and dismal face in the 
looking-glass. 

True, she has become thus melancholy or 
fractious solely through the wear and tear of 
self-sacrificing love. " But what in perdition 
did she do it for?" her irate husband will break 
out, in some exasperated hour : " Why could 
not her devotion have taken a cheerier and 
more sensible shape ? " " The brute ! " will then 
chorus, in shrill outcry, all the neighbor wives. 



X74 BIRD-BOLTS. 

No, the man is not a brute ! Revenge is a wild 
kind of justice. He has a right to tear his hair, 
— that is, within reasonable limits, — when he 
finds that the highest ideal of love conceivable 
by the woman he led to the altar has event- 
uated in the shortest cut she could take to 
"medicine-bottles for two." 



XXXIII. 

THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 

/^\F the dreary experiences of ordinary life, 
few oppress the mind with such a sense 
of waking nightmare as the necessity, now and 
then entailed upon every householder, of haunt- 
ing the vast spaces of a furniture warehouse to 
select some needful articles. The "monotony 
of endless variety " with which he finds himself 
bewildered, the vulgar, staring individualism of 
each separate chair, table, or lounge, the pol- 
ished and veneered smile of cynical contempt 
at the very idea of domestic comfort and sweet 
family seclusion reflected from every object, — 
all this kills out, for the time being, the possi- 
bility of any trace of sentiment over the sacred- 
ness of wife or child or home. 

And yet the sough t-f or objects once selected 
and released from their dreary prison-house, the 
table placed in the centre of the room and 
crowned with a radiant light, the chairs dis- 
posed around the ruddy open fire, the sofa 



176 BIKD-BOLTS. 

rolled into a snug corner, and inviting to 
stretch out the weary body and pillow the 
tired head, and what a change comes over 
the spirit of the dream ! A unity, sweet as 
happy marriage, has made one blessed house- 
hold out of a score of lone and loveless indi- 
vidualities. 

Of just such experiences, varied in a thousand 
shapes, is human experience full. Here, for 
example, in this New England region, how often 
does a day come when, under the disenchant- 
ment of a clear, prosaic west wind, all unity, 
harmony, and poetry are swept with a besom 
out of the landscape ! Every object — tree, 
road, church, meadow, village — stares out in 
the selfish, vulgar obtrusiveness of so many arti- 
cles in the furniture shop, flouting the bare 
idea of being part of an harmonious picture, 
Baptist, Calvinistic, Unitarian, each in its dog- 
matic self-assertion. As lief would one read for 
his delectation a dictionary or city-directory, in 
lieu of a poem, as long look out of the window. 

The reason is plain. There are visible seven 
hills, no one of which seems ever to have ex- 
changed a sunrise greeting with the others; 
three spires, no one of which to have ever 
pointed to a common heaven ; four villages, no 



THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 177 

one of them suggesting more sweet and neigh- 
borly intercourse than Jew had with Samaritan. 
They were from the beginning, are now, and 
ever will be separate, unrelated existences. 
Every one for himself, and the devil for us all, 
is the creed they look as though they professed, 
with the only approach to unanimity that can 
be said to characterize them at all. 

Then suddenly, as though heaven itself were 
weary of the atheistic sight, lo ! from the east 
or south a vapor-laden atmosphere, under which, 
as beneath a bridal veil, all things are ethereal- 
ized, blent together, made to brood and dream 
and love. Anon, great clouds roll up from the 
horizon. Lurid, lead-colored masses in back- 
ground overhang the eastern sky, while from 
the west the sinking sun pours out floods of 
purple and gold. 

And now the divine symphony begins. God 
in them and they in God, hill flashes flaming 
greeting to hill, valley whispers peace to neigh- 
bor valley, burning spire exults in splendid 
relief against lowering cloud, every window is 
ablaze, myriad lingering raindrops coruscate the 
sunbeams in i^isn^tic splendor. On every 
hand, the individual dies exultingly to find his 
beatific life in the life of all. And when, at 



178 BIRD-BOLTS. 

last, some half-delirious robin, drunk with the 
spectacle, perches himself on the topmost vibrat- 
ing spire of a cedar, wrought to irrepressible 
yearning to fill full the air with song and 
lyric gladness, as it is with light and glory, 
what but the blest interpreter he of the soaring 
and the carol of every heart that shares such 
high-carnival time of harmonious nature ! 

This yearning of man's higher being after 
unity and harmony, this pure happiness and 
sweet home-feeling he experiences in it, surely 
it can be nothing else nor less than the answer 
from within to the reality of a divine order 
environing the soul, wooing, inspiring, fusing it 
into kindred likeness with itself. The images 
that fill the mind with perfect rest and satisfac- 
tion, of the mother lost in the sweetness of her 
sleeping babe, the patriot one with the perils 
and the triumphs of his country, the saint rapt 
in the bliss of the overflowing thanksgiving of 
his heart, why are these thus beautiful in our 
eyes but because they are elastic and up-spring- 
ing deliverance from the sense of burden and 
oppression begotten in us by the nightmare 
weight of mere isolated, meaningless, unrelated 
units? So much of God made manifest are 



THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 179 

they ; for God is music, meaning, vision, creative 
breath in and through all things, unsearchable in 
the depths of his being, apprehended only by the 
soul sunk in the ravishment of some strain of 
the eternal harmony that suggests the infinite 
whole. 

If there be anything, therefore, in the wide 
universe man has a divine right to abhor and 
surge against, it is mere units, units in the land- 
scape, units in the family, units in the State and 
Church ; unblent, unfused individualities, angu- 
lar, sharp-cornered, fitting as parts into nothing 
larger, richer, grander than themselves. In 
their stifling realm of whirling dust-particles can 
reason, love, imagination, faith, draw no breath 
of life. Hateful inevitably is everything in 
naked isolation. Look at the spectre, death! 
How ugly and unrelated, mere clash and jar of 
discord, part in no harmony, prophecy of no 
fulfilment, so long as it points to nothing 
beyond itself ! Reconciled with it as finality 
can no man ever be. No, for not after the 
manner and genius of the Creator of mother 
and babe, patriot and fatherland, star and as- 
tronomer, eye and sunset, heroic youth and 
flushing maiden, is it. 



180 BIRD-BOLTS. 

The lover of beauty hails at a glance a gen- 
uine Raphael or Titian. Too often has he been 
floated on the waves of their triumphant genius, 
to make possible the attempt to palm off on him, 
as their handiwork, a prosaic, discordant daub. 
Reverently and loyally let the soul affirm at 
least as much of God. Humbly yet proudly 
let it cry: "I know this genius and his man- 
ner. Dust and ashes are no summing-up of. 
this miracle of human life. He has taken me 
into his confidence in his high-carnival hours, 
and opened my ears to the Symphony of Crea- 
tion. Deny who will, I cry with Beethoven, 
'God is nearer to me in my music than to 
others.' Deny who will, mine the vaulting con- 
fidence of Emerson, ' Our dissatisfaction with 
any other solution is the blazing evidence of 
our immortality.' In the law of harmony do I 
make my refuge; and lowly-proud as Brown- 
ing's grand old organist, Abt Vogler, re-echo his 
strain : — 

' Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 
and woe ; 
But God has a few of us whom he wbispers in the ear. 
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musiciam 
know.' " 



